Reply to: Capturing stochasticity properly is key to understanding the nuances of the Living Planet Index

Buschke, Falko T.; Hagan, James G.; Santini, Luca; Coetzee, Bernard W. T.

doi:10.1038/s41559-023-02087-9

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…The symmetry on logarithmic scale makes a good sense, as population increase and decrease are essentially multiplicative processes, while symmetric changes in the arithmetic scale imply that the multiplicative increase of populations is lower than the multiplicative decrease (see also refs. 19 , 20 ). The LPI thus properly reflects symmetric multiplicative population changes, the decreasing LPI indicating asymmetry in this multiplicative population growth towards higher multiplicative decreases than increases.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, one methodological factor may cause these time series to bias the LPI towards overall decrease. Population dynamics are affected by variability arising from demographic, environmental, and sampling stochasticity, which introduces uncertainty into the LPI 15 , 20 . To mitigate this uncertainty, a smoothing procedure based on the GAM method is applied during the index calculation.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mathematical biases in the calculation of the Living Planet Index lead to overestimation of vertebrate population decline

Toszogyova,

Smyčka,

Storch

2024

Nat Commun

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The Living Planet Index (LPI) measures the average change in population size of vertebrate species over recent decades and has been repeatedly used to assess the changing state of nature. The LPI indicates that vertebrate populations have decreased by almost 70% over the last 50 years. This is in striking contrast with current studies based on the same population time series data that show that increasing and decreasing populations are balanced on average. Here, we examine the methodological pipeline of calculating the LPI to search for the source of this discrepancy. We find that the calculation of the LPI is biased by several mathematical issues which impose an imbalance between detected increasing and decreasing trends and overestimate population declines. Rather than indicating that vertebrate populations do not substantially change, our findings imply that we need better measures for providing a balanced picture of current biodiversity changes. We also show some modifications to improve the reliability of the LPI.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%