Distorted Views of Biodiversity: Spatial and Temporal Bias in Species Occurrence Data

Boakes, Elizabeth H.; McGowan, Philip J.K.; Fuller, Richard A.; Ding, Changqing; Clark, Natalie E.; O’Connor, Kim; Mace, Georgina M.

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000385

Cited by 642 publications

(661 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…In other words, we chose mammals that have experienced range loss but still have substantive range remaining. Although we carefully examined historic and current maps, range maps often contain errors (40), which may introduce noise, but should not have systematically biased our analyses. For most species, the historic range was one continuous polygon; however, for those species that had discontinuous historic ranges (multiple discrete polygons), we only included those natural populations (discrete polygons) in which there had been some but not total range loss.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…2 and Table S2). It is reassuring that protected areas and the human influence index were significant in so many species given the complications introduced by spatial population structure (see above), range map limitations (40), and the coarseness of both proxies. Despite these robust patterns, two important caveats to our conclusions bear discussion.…”

Section: A Jubatus (As) (Ce) P Tigris (E) P Leo (V) a Jubatus (Amentioning

confidence: 99%

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Anthropogenic and environmental drivers of modern range loss in large mammals

Yackulic

Sanderson

Uriarte

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

114

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The extinction of a species is inevitably preceded by the extirpation of a series of local populations. Ecological theory predicts that vulnerability to extirpation varies between populations and is ultimately linked to environmental heterogeneity. If populations of a species are present in multiple regions separated by abrupt changes in environmental conditions (e.g., biomes), spatial variation in vulnerability to extirpation may be closely linked to the distribution of these regions. In the absence of abrupt shifts in environmental conditions, populations at the edge of a species' range should have low growth rates and be more vulnerable to extirpation, whereas populations located in the core of the species' range should be exposed to more favorable environmental conditions, have higher growth rates, and be less vulnerable. Here, we ask whether the distribution of biomes or range position better reflects spatial variation in vulnerability for 43 mammal species distributed through four continents. We control for the distribution of human threats and quantify the importance of protected areas in population persistence. We conclude that the distribution of biomes is a better predictor of vulnerability than position in the geographic range. We also find that core populations are less vulnerable than edge populations (after controlling for threats levels and protected areas). Protected areas are important for the persistence of most species we studied. By providing a measure of vulnerability linked directly to the distribution of threats, our results offer insights for scaling up from species vulnerability to extinction risk.T he geographic ranges of many species are composed of multiple interacting local populations (1). Range loss occurs as local populations are progressively extirpated (2).Focusing on range loss, and the extirpation of these local populations, provides insight into the process of extinction, and can help inform conservation action and management. For example, studies of range collapse can draw attention to declining species before they reach levels requiring intensive interventions (2, 3) and this focus can uncover the drivers of range loss, providing important insights for management (3, 4). Even if a species is still globally common, studying range loss can also identify where ecosystems are losing local populations of a given species (5).Although it is clear that various forms of human modification of the environment are the major extrinsic drivers of extirpations (2, 6), there is ongoing debate about the role that other factors, including intraspecific variation in vulnerability play in determining patterns of range loss.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: A Jubatus (As) (Ce) P Tigris (E) P Leo (V) a Jubatus (Amentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropogenic and environmental drivers of modern range loss in large mammals

Yackulic

Sanderson

Uriarte

2011

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

114

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“…Alternatively, using sets of species occurrences such as those provided by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (www.gbif. org) was clearly less desirable in this case: although invaluable in many instances, such data have been shown to be still incomplete and often geographically biased (e.g., by political boundaries) (5).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reply to Harwood et al.: Thermophilization estimation is robust to the scale of species distribution data

Frenne¹,

Rodríguez‐Sánchez²,

Bernhardt‐Römermann³

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…Museum specimen labels and registers ideally indicate the place and date of collection. However, even when such information is available, considerable work may be required to make it accessible for research, for example, by georeferencing (establishing the latitude and longitude of) obscure place-names, and entering all records onto an electronic database [2]. Collaboration between researchers and collections managers is essential and, if resources for curation are limited, researchers should consider including collections databasing into their funding proposals.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These include biogeographic range changes (spatial and/or altitudinal) [2]; phenological shifts (e.g. in flowering time [3]); and evolutionary change (genetic or morphological).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Natural history collections as sources of long-term datasets

Lister¹

2011

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

186

144

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In the otherwise excellent special issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution on long-term ecological research (TREE 25(10), 2010), none of the contributors mentioned the importance of natural history collections (NHCs) as sources of data that can strongly complement past and ongoing survey data. Whereas very few field surveys have operated for more than a few decades, NHCs, conserved in museums and other institutions, comprise samples of the Earth's biota typically extending back well into the nineteenth century and, in some cases, before this time. They therefore span the period of accelerated anthropogenic habitat destruction, climate warming and ocean acidification, in many cases reflecting baseline conditions before the major impact of these factors.Natural history collections (NHCs) provide a rich source of data at the taxic and community levels, and can contribute to a wide range of studies [1]. These include biogeographic range changes (spatial and/or altitudinal) [2]; phenological shifts (e.g. in flowering time [3]); and evolutionary change (genetic or morphological). They can also (if unsorted bulk samples are available) document changes in community composition in the recent past (historical samples) and through deeper geological time (fossil samples). In addition, museum specimens provide source material for a range of genetic, biochemical, isotopic and trace-element studies into organismal responses to environmental change (e.g. use of preserved feathers to trace changes in the diet and migration of birds [4]).NHCs comprise not only the products of opportunistic collecting but are also (particularly in the major national museums and institutions) repositories of major surveys. The Natural History Museum (NHM) in London, UK, for example, houses thousands of jars from the Discovery and Challenger marine expeditions that were collected at hundreds of stations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These samples provide an outstanding (and largely untapped) resource for comparison with modern survey data. Collections made with a coherent and systematic sampling strategy are inevitably more likely to provide research-quality material than ad-hoc or point samples. Unknown or inconsistent sampling strategy can be a problem, but this is not unique to museum collections; methodological changes or gaps also occur in long-term field datasets and need to be accommodated in the analysis [5].Of particular value, a proportion of historical and modern collections comprise time-series (i.e. the same locality and/or taxon has been regularly collected over many years). For exploration of long-term ecological responses, NHCderived datasets can be integrated with local or regional climatic and other records, such as the Central England Temperature Record, which is continuous back to 1659 (http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/). Time-series through much longer intervals of the Earth's history are available in palaeontological collections.Central to all such endeavours is the availability of accurate provenance...

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Distorted Views of Biodiversity: Spatial and Temporal Bias in Species Occurrence Data

Abstract: Boakes et al. compile and analyze a historical dataset of 170,000 bird sightings over two centuries and show how changing trends in data gathering may confound a true picture of biodiversity change.

Cited by 642 publications

References 25 publications

Anthropogenic and environmental drivers of modern range loss in large mammals

Anthropogenic and environmental drivers of modern range loss in large mammals

Reply to Harwood et al.: Thermophilization estimation is robust to the scale of species distribution data

Natural history collections as sources of long-term datasets

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