Three in four undescribed plant species are threatened with extinction

Brown, Matilda J. M.; Bachman, Steven P.; Lughadha, Eimear Nic

doi:10.1111/nph.19214

Cited by 20 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Year of description (Brown et al ., 2023a) has not previously been used in plant extinction risk predictions, but made a useful contribution to our model (Figure 3). The relationship between year of description and probability of being threatened is related to range size, as plant species currently being described by taxonomists tend to be restricted to a single botanical country, 92% in 2020, compared to <50% in 1900 (Brown et al ., 2023a). However, range size alone does not completely explain the predictive power of year of description, suggesting it may be capturing additional predictive power linked to rarity, decline, fragmentation or other Red List criteria, and it is this additional predictive power that is being leveraged in our model.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Predictors were selected to represent five important correlates of extinction risk: geographic distribution (number of botanical countries), evolutionary history (first 50 eigenvectors capturing evolutionary relatedness among species), traits (lifeform), human threats (human footprint values from 2009 (10 classes) and change in human footprint values from 1993 to 2009 (5 classes) (Venter et al ., 2016)), and biomes (16 biomes from the WWF Ecoregions dataset (Olson et al ., 2001), including rock & ice and lakes). In addition, we included the year of description, derived from WCVP, as a predictor based on the finding that recently described plant species are more likely to be threatened (Brown et al ., 2023a). See Table S3 for the full list of predictors and item S4 for a description of the predictors and how they were generated.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Extinction risk predictions for the world’s flowering plants to support their conservation

Bachman,

Brown,

Leão

et al. 2023

Preprint

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More than 70% of all vascular plants lack conservation status assessments. We aimed to address this shortfall in knowledge of species extinction risk by using the World Checklist of Vascular Plants to generate the first comprehensive set of predictions for a large clade: angiosperms (flowering plants, ~330,000 species). We used Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART) to predict the extinction risk of all angiosperms using predictors relating to range size, human footprint, climate, and evolutionary history and applied a novel approach to estimate uncertainty of individual species level predictions. From our model predictions we estimate 45.1% of angiosperm species are potentially threatened with a lower bound of 44.5% and upper bound of 45.7%. Our species-level predictions, with associated uncertainty estimates, do not replace full Red List assessments, but can be used to prioritise predicted threatened species for full Red List assessment and fast-track predicted non-threatened species for Least Concern assessments. Our predictions and uncertainty estimates can also guide fieldwork, inform systematic conservation planning and support global plant conservation efforts and targets.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Extinction risk predictions for the world’s flowering plants to support their conservation

Bachman,

Brown,

Leão

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…Predictors were selected to represent five important correlates of extinction risk: geographic distribution (number of botanical countries), evolutionary history (first 252 eigenvectors capturing evolutionary relatedness among species), traits (lifeform), human threats (human footprint values from 2009 (10 classes) and change in human footprint values from 1993 to 2009 (5 classes) (Venter et al, 2016)), and biomes (16 biomes from the WWF Ecoregions dataset (Olson et al, 2001), including rock & ice and lakes). In addition, we included the year of description, derived from WCVP, as a predictor based on the finding that recently described plant species are more likely to be threatened (Brown et al, 2023a). See Table S1 for the full list of predictors and Methods S1 for a description of the predictors and how they were generated (see also Tables S2 and S3).…”

Section: Predictor Calculationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extinction risk predictions for the world's flowering plants to support their conservation

Bachman,

Brown,

Leão

et al. 2024

New Phytologist

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Summary More than 70% of all vascular plants lack conservation status assessments. We aimed to address this shortfall in knowledge of species extinction risk by using the World Checklist of Vascular Plants to generate the first comprehensive set of predictions for a large clade: angiosperms (flowering plants, c. 330 000 species). We used Bayesian Additive Regression Trees (BART) to predict the extinction risk of all angiosperms using predictors relating to range size, human footprint, climate, and evolutionary history and applied a novel approach to estimate uncertainty of individual species‐level predictions. From our model predictions, we estimate 45.1% of angiosperm species are potentially threatened with a lower bound of 44.5% and upper bound of 45.7%. Our species‐level predictions, with associated uncertainty estimates, do not replace full global, or regional Red List assessments, but can be used to prioritise predicted threatened species for full Red List assessment and fast‐track predicted non‐threatened species for Least Concern assessments. Our predictions and uncertainty estimates can also guide fieldwork, inform systematic conservation planning and support global plant conservation efforts and targets.

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“…Further support for the idea that the impact of extinctions in redefining phytoregions may have been underestimated is provided by revised estimates of current extinction risk (Nic Lughadha et al ., 2020, Bachman, 2023). Recent research suggests that as many as two in five known vascular plant species are threatened with extinction (Nic Lughadha et al ., 2020) and emphasises that this estimate does not factor in plant species that are as yet unknown to science but are likely to prove threatened once assessed (Cheek et al ., 2020; Brown et al ., 2023a). Moreover, these recent estimates cannot account for the as yet unquantified effects of habitat loss, climate change or invasions on global plant extinction debt: the species richness that a community must lose in order to re‐establish an equilibrium consistent with the species area relationship (Figueiredo et al ., 2019; Nic Lughadha et al ., 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re‐evaluating the importance of threatened species in maintaining global phytoregions

Brown,

Walker,

Budden

et al. 2023

New Phytologist

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Summary Anthropogenic introductions are known to be changing the structure of global phytogeographical regions (phytoregions), but previous studies have been limited by incomplete or biased data sets that are likely to underestimate the importance of threatened species. In this work, we analyse a comprehensive data set of all known species and their occurrences (at botanical country resolution) to quantify the impact of potential future extinction scenarios. We used Infomap, a network‐based community detection algorithm, to generate phytoregional delineations for six species‐distribution scenarios (native, introduced and extinctions of species that are either documented as threatened or likely to be threatened, as well as combinations thereof). We compared the numbers and sizes of phytoregions to characterise the amount and spatial distribution of changes in global phytoregions under each scenario. Extinctions of species that are predicted to be threatened had a greater homogenising effect on phytoregions than introductions, and there was some evidence that introductions may even mitigate the homogenisation caused by extinctions, though this interaction is complex. This research provides the first evidence that the loss of threatened species would have significant ramifications for global phytoregions and demonstrates the need to consider extinction processes in studies of anthropogenic effects on biodiversity patterns.

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Three in four undescribed plant species are threatened with extinction

Abstract: This article is part of the Special Collection ‘Global plant diversity and distribution’. See https://www.newphytologist.org/global-plant-diversity for more details.

Cited by 20 publications

References 28 publications

Extinction risk predictions for the world’s flowering plants to support their conservation

Extinction risk predictions for the world’s flowering plants to support their conservation

Extinction risk predictions for the world's flowering plants to support their conservation

Re‐evaluating the importance of threatened species in maintaining global phytoregions

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