Cambridge prisms. Extinction最新文献

Cycads, an ancient lineage, face a higher threat of extinction than any other plant group. To address this urgent issue, a more comprehensive method for assessing extinction threat, the Conservation and Prioritization Index (CPI), is proposed and tested for cycads in the State of Veracruz, Mexico. The CPI is a multifaceted approach that incorporates techniques used in conservation status assessments by the IUCN and the Mexican NOM-059-SEMARNAT-2010 but incorporates other information, including georeferenced distribution data, endemism in Veracruz, number of locations, extent of occurrence, and distribution area. Using CPI, correlations were found between longitude and extinction risk for Ceratozamia species in Veracruz. Zamia vazquezii and Z. inermis were assessed to have the highest level of extinction risk. Overall, this study indicates that a more holistic approach, incorporating broader sources of environmental health, can be used to more effectively and proactively manage extinction threats to cycads in Veracruz. In this sense, Veracruz can serve as a model for conservation planning in different states in Mexico and worldwide. CPI is a tool that can be applied to other regions to manage another threatened biota. This method enhances objectivity and effectiveness in conservation efforts, promoting data-driven decision-making that can be used globally.

One of the main objectives of ecological research is to enhance our understanding of the processes that lead to species extinction. A potentially crucial extinction pattern is the dependence of contemporary biodiversity dynamics on past climates, also known as "climate legacy". However, the general impact of climate legacy on extinction dynamics is unknown. Here, we conduct a systematic review to summarize the effect of climate legacies on extinction dynamics. We find that few works studying the relationship between extinction dynamics and climate include the potential impact of climate legacies (10%), with even fewer studies reaching beyond merely discussing them (3%). Among the studies that quantified climate legacies, six out of seven reported an improved fit of models to extinction dynamics, with most also describing substantial impacts of legacy effects on extinction risk. These include an increase in extinction risk of up to 40% when temperature changes add to a long-term trend in the same direction, as well as substantial effects on species' adaptations, population dynamics and juvenile recruitment. Various ecological processes have been identified in the literature as potential ways in which climate legacies could affect the vulnerability of modern ecosystems to anthropogenic climate change, including niche conservatism, physiological thresholds, time lags and cascading effects. Overall, we find high agreement that climate legacy is a crucial process shaping extinction dynamics. Incorporating climate legacies in biodiversity assessments could be a key step toward a better understanding of the ecological consequences arising from climate change.

Ecological restoration has traditionally had a bottom-up focus on plants and vegetation, but rewilding has been the opposite, and the impacts of rewilding carnivores and large herbivores on plant species and vegetation are largely unknown. The aim of this perspective, therefore, is to clarify what rewilding means for plants and vegetation, to assess progress in achieving this, to identify research needs and to make recommendations for rewilding practice. Land-use legacies and dispersal limitation are major challenges for plant rewilding, and the slowness of vegetation recovery makes success hard to evaluate on a human timescale. On the other hand, wild vegetation develops spontaneously wherever human pressures are released, regardless of the state of the site. For plant conservation, the key issue is ensuring that all plant species that can be restored are present, including rare and threatened species. Long-term species-level monitoring and, where necessary, continued intervention should be part of all projects that aim to rewild plants and vegetation.

The possibility of human extinction has received growing academic attention over the last several decades. Research has analysed possible pathways to human extinction, as well as ethical considerations relating to human survival. Potential causes of human extinction can be loosely grouped into exogenous threats such as an asteroid impact and anthropogenic threats such as war or a catastrophic physics accident. In all cases, an outcome as extreme as human extinction would require events or developments that either have been of very low probability historically or are entirely unprecedented. This introduces deep uncertainty and methodological challenges to the study of the topic. This review provides an overview of potential human extinction causes considered plausible in the current academic literature, experts' judgements of likelihood where available and a synthesis of ethical and social debates relating to the study of human extinction.

Through compositional inclusion or exclusion, the photograph can assert and communicate what belongs in a picture, in a landscape, in an ecosystem. It can illuminate what we deem conservation-worthy, or, on a larger scale, which extinctions are attention-worthy. Photographic practice helps to illuminate the active nature of extinction, and our choices as actors and witnesses within that process. Here, researchers from the University of Leeds' Extinction Studies Doctoral Training Programme present individual reflections on interdisciplinary practice-led research in the Scottish Small Isles. We consider how photography, as a form of praxis, can generate new forms of knowledge surrounding extinction: its meanings, representations, and legacies, particularly through visual representation. We offer seven perspectives on contemporary image-making, from disciplines including philosophy, conservation biology, literature, sociology, geology, cultural anthropology, and palaeontology. Researchers gathered experiential, ethical, even biological meanings from considering what to include or exclude in images: from the micro to the macro, the visible to the invisible, the aesthetic to the ecological. We draw conclusions around meaning-making through the process of photography itself, and the tensions encountered through framing and decision-making in a time of mass ecological decline.

This perspective positions rewilding as a novel approach to ecosystem restoration, emphasising the restoration of natural processes to create self-willed ecosystems. Central to European rewilding is the de-domestication of cattle and horses to act as functional analogues of the extinct aurochs and wild horses. This de-extinction pathway shifts the focus from the loss of species to the loss of their ecological roles caused by human actions commencing millennia ago. The focus on restoring functional effects provides a strong policy rationale for large herbivore de-domestication, aligning with nature-based solutions to address environmental challenges. This alignment requires a pragmatic approach that prioritises the restoration of ecosystem functions over genetic purity and offers flexibility and scalability in rewilding efforts. I argue that creating a new category of 'ecosystem engineer' livestock is more effective than seeking wild status for these animals. As they are released into recovering ecosystems, de-domesticated large herbivores are recreating their ecological roles, 'life-spheres' and interactions. These processes open new avenues in both extinction discourse and ecological theory and encourage us to explore how de-extinct species can drive the recovery of European ecosystems.

Biodiversity is in rapid decline, but the extent of loss is not well resolved for poorly known groups. We estimate the number of extinctions for Australian non-marine invertebrates since the European colonisation of the continent. Our analyses use a range of approaches, incorporate stated uncertainties and recognise explicit caveats. We use plausible bounds for the number of species, two approaches for estimating extinction rate, and Monte Carlo simulations to select combinations of projected distributions from these variables. We conclude that 9,111 (plausible bounds of 1,465 to 56,828) Australian species have become extinct over this 236-year period. These estimates dwarf the number of formally recognised extinctions of Australian invertebrates (10 species) and of the single invertebrate species listed as extinct under Australian legislation. We predict that 39-148 species will become extinct in 2024. This is inconsistent with a recent pledge by the Australian government to prevent all extinctions. This high rate of loss is largely a consequence of pervasive taxonomic biases in community concern and conservation investment. Those characteristics also make it challenging to reduce that rate of loss, as there is uncertainty about which invertebrate species are at the most risk. We outline conservation responses to reduce the likelihood of further extinctions.

The transition between the Paleocene and Eocene epochs (ca. 56 Ma) was marked by a period of rapid global warming of 5 °C to 8 °C following a carbon isotope excursion (CIE) lasting 200 ky or less referred to as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). The PETM precipitated a significant shift in the composition of North American floral communities and major mammalian turnover. We explored the ecological impacts of this phenomenon by analyzing 173 mammal species from the Bighorn Basin, Wyoming, USA, including their associated body alongside a database of 30 palynofloral localities as proxies for habitat. For each time bin, we calculated mean and median differences in body mass and habitat preference between significantly aggregated and segregated mammal species. Aggregated species showed significant similarity in habitat preference only prior to the PETM, after which habitat preference ceased to be a significant factor in community assembly. Our measures of differences in body mass space provide no evidence of a significant impact of competitive interactions on community assembly across the PETM, aligning with previous work. Our results indicate the persistence of a stable mammalian functional community structure despite taxonomic turnover, climate change and broadening habitat preferences.

Accurately predicting the vulnerabilities of species to climate change requires a more detailed understanding of the functional and life-history traits that make some species more susceptible to declines and extinctions in shifting climates. This is because existing trait-based correlates of extinction risk from climate and environmental disturbances vary widely, often being idiosyncratic and context dependent. A powerful solution is to analyse the growing volume of biological data on changes in species ranges and abundances using process-explicit ecological models that run at fine temporal and spatial scales and across large geographical extents. These simulation-based approaches can unpack complex interactions between species' traits and climate and other threats. This enables species-responses to climatic change to be contextualised and integrated into future biodiversity projections and to be used to formulate and assess conservation policy goals. By providing a more complete understanding of the traits and contexts that regulate different responses of species to climate change, these process-driven approaches are likely to result in more certain predictions of the species that are most vulnerable to climate change.