Predicting how populations decline to extinction
Predicting how populations decline to extinction
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DOI：
10.1098/rstb.2011.0015
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发表时间：
2011-09-12
影响因子：
6.3
通讯作者：
Baillie, Jonathan E. M.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Collen, Ben;McRae, Louise;Baillie, Jonathan E. M.
全球物种灭绝通常代表着一系列人口下降和局部灭绝的终点。在当代哺乳动物物种灭绝风险的比较研究中，似乎有一些普遍的特征，可能使类群灭绝的风险升高。在当地人口水平的研究中，对人口下降和灭绝过程的了解有限。此外，人们对地方进程如何扩大到全球模式仍然缺乏了解。推进对使种群迅速下降的因素的理解将有利于积极主动的保护，并使我们能够针对处于风险中的种群以及处于风险中的物种。在这里，我们从最大的种群丰度趋势数据库中获取哺乳动物种群趋势数据，并将其与PanTHERIA哺乳动物性状数据库联合收割机相结合，以回答这个问题：什么因素可以用来预测哺乳动物丰度的下降？我们发现，在一般情况下，环境变量是更好的跨物种种群水平下降的决定因素比内在的生物特征。为了有效地保护，我们不仅要描述哪些物种处于危险之中，为什么，而且还要规定应对措施。
Global species extinction typically represents the endpoint in a long sequence of population declines and local extinctions. In comparative studies of extinction risk of contemporary mammalian species, there appear to be some universal traits that may predispose taxa to an elevated risk of extinction. In local population-level studies, there are limited insights into the process of population decline and extinction. Moreover, there is still little appreciation of how local processes scale up to global patterns. Advancing the understanding of factors which predispose populations to rapid declines will benefit proactive conservation and may allow us to target at-risk populations as well as at-risk species. Here, we take mammalian population trend data from the largest repository of population abundance trends, and combine it with the PanTHERIA database on mammal traits to answer the question: what factors can be used to predict decline in mammalian abundance? We find in general that environmental variables are better determinants of cross-species population-level decline than intrinsic biological traits. For effective conservation, we must not only describe which species are at risk and why, but also prescribe ways to counteract this.