Limitations imposed on species ranges by the climatic, ecological, and physiological effects of elevation are important determinants of extinction risk. We modeled the effects of elevational limits on the extinction risk of landbirds, 87% of all bird species. Elevational limitation of range size explained 97% of the variation in the probability of being in a World Conservation Union category of...

When we hear the word extinction, most of us immediately think of dinosaurs and woolly mammoths and cataclysmic events precipitating their extinction. Some of us are also aware of current extinction threats and recent extinctions, but few, if any, of us understand the varying and complex circumstances under which extinction actually happens. It turns out that extinction and species survival are...

When we hear the word extinction, most of us immediately think of dinosaurs and woolly mammoths and cataclysmic events precipitating their extinction. Some of us are also aware of current extinction threats and recent extinctions, but few, if any, of us understand the varying and complex circumstances under which extinction actually happens. It turns out that extinction and species survival are...

Introducing the effect of extinction into the so-called replicator equations in mathematical biology, we construct a general model of ecosystems. The present model shows mass extinction by its own extinction dynamics when the system initially has a large number of species (diversity). The extinction dynamics shows several significant features such as a power law in basin size distribution, indu...

background & aim: chaharmahal va bakhtiari province contains several major floristic plant associations of central zagros mountains. kallar species were used for medicines nutrias in this area. however, these valuable species have been threatened and even become at risk of extinction due to habitat fragmentation and disturbance. therefore, the first step in protecting theses species is iden...

Determining which biological traits influence differences in extinction risk is vital for understanding the differential diversification of life and for making predictions about species' vulnerability to anthropogenic impacts. Here I present a hierarchical Bayesian survival model of North American Cenozoic mammal species durations in relation to species-level ecological factors, time of origina...

Habitat destruction often results in the loss of biodiversity in natural communities. Vernal pools are a feature of California’s native landscape which have been heavily impacted over the past century by agricultural and urban development. Current estimates of vernal pool losses in the Central Valley range from 50-85% of pre-settlement acreages. In this paper I apply data from recent field surv...

In an effort to avoid species loss, scientists have focused their efforts on the mechanisms making some species more prone to extinction than others. However, species show different responses to threats given their evolutionary history, behavior, and intrinsic biological features. We used bird biological features and external threats to (1) understand the multiple pathways driving Brazilian bir...

Despite increasing concern over the effects of human activities on marine ecosystems, extinction in the sea remains scarce: 19-24 out of a total of >850 recorded extinctions implies a 9-fold lower marine extinction rate compared to non-marine systems. The extent of threats faced by marine systems, and their resilience to them, receive considerable attention, but the detectability of marine exti...

We use a classical combinatorial inequality to establish a Markov inequality for multivariate binary Markov processes on trees. We then apply this result, alongside the Fortuin– Kasteleyn–Ginibre (FKG) inequality, to compare the expected loss of biodiversity under two models of species extinction. One of these models is the generalized version of an earlier model in which extinction is influenc...