During Earth's history, species extinction has probably been caused by modifications of the physical environment after impacts such as meteorites or volcanic activity. On the contrary, the actual extinction of species is mainly a result of human activities, namely any form of land use that causes the conversion of vast areas to settlement, agriculture, and forestry, resulting in habitat destruc...

Extinction risk varies across species and space owing to the combined and interactive effects of ecology/life history and geography. For predictive conservation science to be effective, large datasets and integrative models that quantify the relative importance of potential factors and separate rapidly changing from relatively static threat drivers are urgently required. Here, we integrate and ...

Global commitments to halt biodiversity decline mean that it is essential to monitor species' extinction risk. However, the work required to assess extinction risk is intensive. We demonstrate an alternative approach to monitoring extinction risk, based on the response of species to external conditions. Using retrospective International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List assessments, we ...

Diversity of the primary groups of contemporary Indo-West Pacific coral reef organisms, including mantis shrimps (stomatopod crustaceans), peaks in the Indo-Australian Archipelago (IAA), reaches a lower peak in East Africa and Madagascar [Indian Ocean continental (IOC)], and declines in the central Indian Ocean (IO) and Central Pacific (CP). Percent endemism in stomatopods (highest in the IAA, ...

Evolutionary lineages differ greatly in their net diversification rates, implying differences in rates of extinction and speciation. Lineages with a large average range size are commonly thought to have reduced extinction risk (although linking low extinction to high diversification has proved elusive). However, climate change cycles can dramatically reduce the geographic range size of even wid...

1. Population extinction is a fundamental ecological process. Recent experimental work has begun to test the large body of theory that predicts how demographic, genetic and environmental factors influence extinction risk. We review empirical studies of extinction conducted under controlled laboratory conditions. Our synthesis highlights four findings. First, extinction theory largely considers ...

In a recent Opinion article in TREE [1], Gurevitch and Padilla concluded that the importance of invasive species in causing declines and extinctions of species is unproven. They analyzed the IUCN Red List database [2] and stated that only 6% of the taxa are threatened with extinction as a result of invasion by alien species and !2% (ten terrestrial plants and no animal species) of the 762 extin...

The continued loss, fragmentation, and degradation of forest habitats are driving an extinction crisis for tropical subtropical bird species. This loss is particularly acute in the Atlantic Forest South America, where it unclear whether several endemic species extinct or extant. We collate model spatiotemporal distributional data one such “lost” species, Purple-winged Ground Dove Paraclaravis g...

Extinction forecasting is one of the most important and challenging areas of conservation biology. Overestimates of extinction rates or the extinction risk of a particular species instigate accusations of hype and overblown conservation rhetoric. Conversely, underestimates may result in limited resources being allocated to other species/habitats perceived as being at greater risk. In this paper...

We compared life-history traits and extinction risk of chondrichthyans (sharks, rays and chimaeras), a group of high conservation concern, from the three major marine habitats (continental shelves, open ocean and deep sea), controlling for phylogenetic correlation. Deep-water chondrichthyans had a higher age at maturity and longevity, and a lower growth completion rate than shallow-water specie...