Multiple ecological pathways to extinction in mammals
Multiple ecological pathways to extinction in mammals
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DOI：
10.1073/pnas.0901956106
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发表时间：
2009-06-30
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
Ceballos, Gerardo
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Davidson, Ana D.;Hamilton, Marcus J.;Ceballos, Gerardo
随着人口和资源需求的持续增长，生物多样性保护从未如此重要。大约四分之一的哺乳动物面临灭绝的危险，超过一半的哺乳动物种群正在减少。保护科学的一个主要优先事项是了解预测灭绝风险的生态特征以及使某些物种比其他物种更脆弱的预测因素之间的相互作用。在这里，使用一个包含近4,500种哺乳动物的新数据库，我们使用决策树模型来量化与灭绝风险相关的多个相互作用的因素。我们表明，灭绝风险的相关性在哺乳动物中差异很大，并且具有不同生活方式和特征组合的物种有独特的灭绝途径。我们发现，风险是相对的，所有种类的哺乳动物，在所有的身体大小，可以在风险取决于其特定的生态。我们的研究结果增加了对灭绝过程的理解，产生了识别风险最大的物种的简单经验法则，并突出了决策树分析为保护工作提供信息的潜力。
As human population and resource demands continue to grow, biodiversity conservation has never been more critical. About one-quarter of all mammals are in danger of extinction, and more than half of all mammal populations are in decline. A major priority for conservation science is to understand the ecological traits that predict extinction risk and the interactions among those predictors that make certain species more vulnerable than others. Here, using a new database of nearly 4,500 mammal species, we use decision-tree models to quantify the multiple interacting factors associated with extinction risk. We show that the correlates of extinction risk vary widely across mammals and that there are unique pathways to extinction for species with different lifestyles and combinations of traits. We find that risk is relative and that all kinds of mammals, across all body sizes, can be at risk depending on their specific ecologies. Our results increase the understanding of extinction processes, generate simple rules of thumb that identify species at greatest risk, and highlight the potential of decision-tree analyses to inform conservation efforts.