Automated assessment reveals that the extinction risk of reptiles is widely underestimated across space and phylogeny.

The Red List of Threatened Species, published by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is a crucial tool for conservation decision-making. However, despite substantial effort, numerous species remain unassessed or have insufficient data available to be assigned a Red List extinction risk category. Moreover, the Red Listing process is subject to various sources of uncertainty and bias. The development of robust automated assessment methods could serve as an efficient and highly useful tool to accelerate the assessment process and offer provisional assessments. Here, we aimed to (1) present a machine learning-based automated extinction risk assessment method that can be used on less known species; (2) offer provisional assessments for all reptiles-the only major tetrapod group without a comprehensive Red List assessment; and (3) evaluate potential effects of human decision biases on the outcome of assessments. We use the method presented here to assess 4,369 reptile species that are currently unassessed or classified as Data Deficient by the IUCN. The models used in our predictions were 90% accurate in classifying species as threatened/nonthreatened, and 84% accurate in predicting specific extinction risk categories. Unassessed and Data Deficient reptiles were considerably more likely to be threatened than assessed species, adding to mounting evidence that these species warrant more conservation attention. The overall proportion of threatened species greatly increased when we included our provisional assessments. Assessor identities strongly affected prediction outcomes, suggesting that assessor effects need to be carefully considered in extinction risk assessments. Regions and taxa we identified as likely to be more threatened should be given increased attention in new assessments and conservation planning. Lastly, the method we present here can be easily implemented to help bridge the assessment gap for other less known taxa.

A season for all things: Phenological imprints in Wikipedia usage and their relevance to conservation.

Phenology plays an important role in many human-nature interactions, but these seasonal patterns are often overlooked in conservation. Here, we provide the first broad exploration of seasonal patterns of interest in nature across many species and cultures. Using data from Wikipedia, a large online encyclopedia, we analyzed 2.33 billion pageviews to articles for 31,751 species across 245 languages. We show that seasonality plays an important role in how and when people interact with plants and animals online. In total, over 25% of species in our data set exhibited a seasonal pattern in at least one of their language-edition pages, and seasonality is significantly more prevalent in pages for plants and animals than it is in a random selection of Wikipedia articles. Pageview seasonality varies across taxonomic clades in ways that reflect observable patterns in phenology, with groups such as insects and flowering plants having higher seasonality than mammals. Differences between Wikipedia language editions are significant; pages in languages spoken at higher latitudes exhibit greater seasonality overall, and species seldom show the same pattern across multiple language editions. These results have relevance to conservation policy formulation and to improving our understanding of what drives human interest in biodiversity.

The psychological appeal of owning private land for conservation.

Continued threats to global biodiversity have stimulated interest in the private purchase of land for conservation. Though not a new phenomenon, private land conservation appears to be on the rise, and its ambiguous position between philanthropy and financial investment leads to questions about the nature of landowner motives. To examine these motives, we used grounded theory techniques to analyze transcripts of narrative interviews with the owners of privately conserved areas (PCAs) and assessed what landowners had in common across a variety of cultural and policy contexts. The result was a model of PCA engagement in which landowners became personally invested in the management of PCAs and in the nature they protected. We found that PCAs can be conceptualized not merely as philanthropic endeavors or investments, but also as meaningful projects in which their owners engage. We integrated our findings with literature indicating that fundamental psychological drives for autonomy, efficacy, and social connection facilitate the engagement process, regardless of whether conservation motivation is intrinsic or extrinsic. Our findings suggest that land conservation programs might benefit from allowing landowner autonomy to the maximum extent possible, developing best practice standards against which landowners can assess their efficacy, and facilitating the development of landowner networks.

Atractivo Psicológico de la Posesión de Tierras Privadas para la Conservación Resumen Las continuas amenazas para la biodiversidad mundial han estimulado el interés por la compra privada de suelo para su conservación. Aunque no es un fenómeno novedoso, la conservación en suelo privado parece estar en aumento, y su posición ambigua entre la filantropía y la inversión financiera nos lleva a cuestionar la naturaleza tras los motivos de los terratenientes. Para examinar estos motivos usamos técnicas de teoría fundamentada para analizar las transcripciones de las entrevistas narrativas realizadas a los dueños de áreas de conservación privadas (ACP) y evaluamos lo que los terratenientes tuvieron en común a lo largo de una variedad de contextos culturales y políticos. El resultado fue un modelo de participación de ACP en el cual los terratenientes se interesaron personalmente por el manejo de las ACP y por la naturaleza a la cual protegen. Descubrimos que las ACP pueden conceptualizarse no sólo como esfuerzos filantrópicos o inversiones, sino también como proyectos significativos en los que participan sus dueños. Integramos nuestros hallazgos con la literatura que indica que los conductores psicológicos fundamentales de la autonomía, la eficiencia, y la conexión social facilitan el proceso de participación, sin importar si la motivación para la conservación es intrínseca o extrínseca. Nuestros hallazgos sugieren que los programas de conservación de suelo pueden considerar permitirles a los terratenientes tener autonomía a la máxima extensión, desarrollar los mejores estándares de práctica con los cuales los terratenientes pueden evaluar su eficiencia, y facilitar el desarrollo de redes de terratenientes.

Evaluating the impact of gas extraction infrastructure on the occupancy of sagebrush-obligate songbirds.

Development associated with natural gas extraction may have negative effects on wildlife. Here we assessed the effects of natural gas development on the distributions of three sagebrush-obligate birds (Brewer's Sparrow, Spizella breweri; Sagebrush Sparrow, Amphispiza belli; and Sage Thrasher, Oreoscoptes montanus) at a natural gas extraction site in Wyoming, USA. Two drivers of habitat disturbance were investigated: natural gas well pads and roadways. Disturbances were quantified on a small scale (minimum distance to a disturbance) and a large scale (landscape density of a disturbance). Their effects on the study species' distributions were assessed using a multi-scale occupancy model. Minimum distances to wells and roadways were found to not have significant impacts on small-scale occupancy. However, roadway and well density at the landscape-scale significantly impacted the large-scale occupancy of Sagebrush Sparrows and Sage Thrashers. The results confirmed our hypotheses that increasing road density negatively affects the landscape-scale occupancy rates of Sagebrush Sparrow and Sage Thrasher, but did not confirm our hypothesis that increasing well density would negatively impact large-scale occupancy. We therefore suggest that linear features that affect patch size may be more important than point features in determining sagebrush-obligate songbird occupancy when compared to structural effects such as habitat fragmentation and increased predation. We recommend that future well construction be focused along existing roadways, that horizontal drilling be used to reduce the need for additional roads, and that deactivation and restoration of roadways be implemented upon the deactivation of wells, we also recommend a possible mitigation strategy when new roads are to be built.

Spatial patterns of carbon, biodiversity, deforestation threat, and REDD+ projects in Indonesia.

There are concerns that Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+) may fail to deliver potential biodiversity cobenefits if it is focused on high carbon areas. We explored the spatial overlaps between carbon stocks, biodiversity, projected deforestation threats, and the location of REDD+ projects in Indonesia, a tropical country at the forefront of REDD+ development. For biodiversity, we assembled data on the distribution of terrestrial vertebrates (ranges of amphibians, mammals, birds, reptiles) and plants (species distribution models for 8 families). We then investigated congruence between different measures of biodiversity richness and carbon stocks at the national and subnational scales. Finally, we mapped active REDD+ projects and investigated the carbon density and potential biodiversity richness and modeled deforestation pressures within these forests relative to protected areas and unprotected forests. There was little internal overlap among the different hotspots (richest 10% of cells) of species richness. There was also no consistent spatial congruence between carbon stocks and the biodiversity measures: a weak negative correlation at the national scale masked highly variable and nonlinear relationships island by island. Current REDD+ projects were preferentially located in areas with higher total species richness and threatened species richness but lower carbon densities than protected areas and unprotected forests. Although a quarter of the total area of these REDD+ projects is under relatively high deforestation pressure, the majority of the REDD+ area is not. In Indonesia at least, first-generation REDD+ projects are located where they are likely to deliver biodiversity benefits. However, if REDD+ is to deliver additional gains for climate and biodiversity, projects will need to focus on forests with the highest threat to deforestation, which will have cost implications for future REDD+ implementation.

Maximizing the phylogenetic diversity of seed banks.

Ex situ conservation efforts such as those of zoos, botanical gardens, and seed banks will form a vital complement to in situ conservation actions over the coming decades. It is therefore necessary to pay the same attention to the biological diversity represented in ex situ conservation facilities as is often paid to protected-area networks. Building the phylogenetic diversity of ex situ collections will strengthen our capacity to respond to biodiversity loss. Since 2000, the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership has banked seed from 14% of the world's plant species. We assessed the taxonomic, geographic, and phylogenetic diversity of the Millennium Seed Bank collection of legumes (Leguminosae). We compared the collection with all known legume genera, their known geographic range (at country and regional levels), and a genus-level phylogeny of the legume family constructed for this study. Over half the phylogenetic diversity of legumes at the genus level was represented in the Millennium Seed Bank. However, pragmatic prioritization of species of economic importance and endangerment has led to the banking of a less-than-optimal phylogenetic diversity and prioritization of range-restricted species risks an underdispersed collection. The current state of the phylogenetic diversity of legumes in the Millennium Seed Bank could be substantially improved through the strategic banking of relatively few additional taxa. Our method draws on tools that are widely applied to in situ conservation planning, and it can be used to evaluate and improve the phylogenetic diversity of ex situ collections.

Understanding the role of representations of human-leopard conflict in Mumbai through media-content analysis.

Attempts to minimize the effects of human-wildlife conflict (HWC) on conservation goals require an understanding of the mechanisms by which such conflicts are caused and sustained. This necessitates looking beyond the natural sciences to the human dimensions of wildlife management. Public dissemination of information regarding HWC occurs largely through the mass media. We conducted a content analysis of print media articles on human-leopard conflict in Mumbai, India. We sought to understand the framing of HWC and the changes in media coverage over a 10-year period (2001-2011) during which a large number of attacks on people prior to 2005 were followed by a program of trapping and relocation. After 2005, when there was a decrease in the level of conflict, the tone of English-language media reports changed. The perpetrator framing was over 5 times more likely before 2005, whereas a neutral framing was twice as likely after 2005. English-language and non-English-language print media differed significantly in their framing of HWC and in the kinds of solutions advocated. Our results also suggest the print mass media in Mumbai could be an influential conduit for content that diminishes HWC. These media outlets seem attentive to human-leopard conflict, capable of correcting erroneous perceptions and facilitating mitigation and effective management. We believe better contact and mutual understanding between conservation professionals and the mass media could be an important component of managing HWC. We further suggest that in such interactions conservation professionals need to be aware of cultural and linguistic differences in reporting within the country.

Preserving the evolutionary potential of floras in biodiversity hotspots.

One of the biggest challenges for conservation biology is to provide conservation planners with ways to prioritize effort. Much attention has been focused on biodiversity hotspots. However, the conservation of evolutionary process is now also acknowledged as a priority in the face of global change. Phylogenetic diversity (PD) is a biodiversity index that measures the length of evolutionary pathways that connect a given set of taxa. PD therefore identifies sets of taxa that maximize the accumulation of 'feature diversity'. Recent studies, however, concluded that taxon richness is a good surrogate for PD. Here we show taxon richness to be decoupled from PD, using a biome-wide phylogenetic analysis of the flora of an undisputed biodiversity hotspot--the Cape of South Africa. We demonstrate that this decoupling has real-world importance for conservation planning. Finally, using a database of medicinal and economic plant use, we demonstrate that PD protection is the best strategy for preserving feature diversity in the Cape. We should be able to use PD to identify those key regions that maximize future options, both for the continuing evolution of life on Earth and for the benefit of society.

The delayed rise of present-day mammals.

Did the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event, by eliminating non-avian dinosaurs and most of the existing fauna, trigger the evolutionary radiation of present-day mammals? Here we construct, date and analyse a species-level phylogeny of nearly all extant Mammalia to bring a new perspective to this question. Our analyses of how extant lineages accumulated through time show that net per-lineage diversification rates barely changed across the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary. Instead, these rates spiked significantly with the origins of the currently recognized placental superorders and orders approximately 93 million years ago, before falling and remaining low until accelerating again throughout the Eocene and Oligocene epochs. Our results show that the phylogenetic 'fuses' leading to the explosion of extant placental orders are not only very much longer than suspected previously, but also challenge the hypothesis that the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event had a major, direct influence on the diversification of today's mammals.

Global distribution and conservation of rare and threatened vertebrates.

Global conservation strategies commonly assume that different taxonomic groups show congruent geographical patterns of diversity, and that the distribution of extinction-prone species in one group can therefore act as a surrogate for vulnerable species in other groups when conservation decisions are being made. The validity of these assumptions remains unclear, however, because previous tests have been limited in both geographical and taxonomic extent. Here we use a database on the global distribution of 19,349 living bird, mammal and amphibian species to show that, although the distribution of overall species richness is very similar among these groups, congruence in the distribution of rare and threatened species is markedly lower. Congruence is especially low among the very rarest species. Cross-taxon congruence is also highly scale dependent, being particularly low at the finer spatial resolutions relevant to real protected areas. 'Hotspots' of rarity and threat are therefore largely non-overlapping across groups, as are areas chosen to maximize species complementarity. Overall, our results indicate that 'silver-bullet' conservation strategies alone will not deliver efficient conservation solutions. Instead, priority areas for biodiversity conservation must be based on high-resolution data from multiple taxa.

Colloquium paper: phylogenetic trees and the future of mammalian biodiversity.

Phylogenies describe the origins and history of species. However, they can also help to predict species' fates and so can be useful tools for managing the future of biodiversity. This article starts by sketching how phylogenetic, geographic, and trait information can be combined to elucidate present mammalian diversity patterns and how they arose. Recent diversification rates and standing diversity show different geographic patterns, indicating that cradles of diversity have moved over time. Patterns in extinction risk reflect both biological differences among mammalian lineages and differences in threat intensity among regions. Phylogenetic comparative analyses indicate that for small-bodied mammals, extinction risk is governed mostly by where the species live and the intensity of the threats, whereas for large-bodied mammals, ecological differences also play an important role. This modeling approach identifies species whose intrinsic biology renders them particularly vulnerable to increased human pressure. We outline how the approach might be extended to consider future trends in anthropogenic drivers, to identify likely future battlegrounds of mammalian conservation, and the likely casualties. This framework could help to highlight consequences of choosing among different future climatic and socioeconomic scenarios. We end by discussing priority-setting, showing how alternative currencies for diversity can suggest very different priorities. We argue that aiming to maximize long-term evolutionary responses is inappropriate, that conservation planning needs to consider costs as well as benefits, and that proactive conservation of largely intact systems should be part of a balanced strategy.

Habitat change and biased sampling influence estimation of diversity trends.

Recent studies have drawn contrasting conclusions about the extent to which local-scale measures of biodiversity are declining and whether such patterns conflict with the global-scale declines that have attracted much attention.1 A key source of high-quality data for such analyses comes from longitudinal biodiversity studies, which sample a given taxon repeatedly over time at a specific location.2 There has been relatively little consideration of how habitat change might lead to biases in the sampling and continuity of biodiversity time series data, and the consequent potential for bias in the biodiversity trends that result. Here, based on analysis of standardized routes from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (3,014 routes sampled over 18 years),3 we demonstrate that major local habitat change is associated with an increase in the rate of survey cessations. We further show that routes that were continued despite major habitat changes show reduced diversity. By simulating potential rates of loss, we show that the underlying real trends in taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity can even reverse in sign if more than a quarter of diversity is lost from routes that ceased and are thus no longer included in surveys. Our analyses imply that biodiversity loss can be underestimated by biases introduced if continued sampling in longitudinal studies is influenced by local change. We argue that researchers and conservation practitioners should be aware of the potential for bias in such data and seek to use more robust methods to evaluate biodiversity trends and make conservation decisions.

Global priorities for conservation of reptilian phylogenetic diversity in the face of human impacts.

Phylogenetic diversity measures are increasingly used in conservation planning to represent aspects of biodiversity beyond that captured by species richness. Here we develop two new metrics that combine phylogenetic diversity and the extent of human pressure across the spatial distribution of species - one metric valuing regions and another prioritising species. We evaluate these metrics for reptiles, which have been largely neglected in previous studies, and contrast these results with equivalent calculations for all terrestrial vertebrate groups. We find that regions under high human pressure coincide with the most irreplaceable areas of reptilian diversity, and more than expected by chance. The highest priority reptile species score far above the top mammal and bird species, and reptiles include a disproportionate number of species with insufficient extinction risk data. Data Deficient species are, in terms of our species-level metric, comparable to Critically Endangered species and therefore may require urgent conservation attention.

Conservation prioritization can resolve the flagship species conundrum.

Conservation strategies based on charismatic flagship species, such as tigers, lions, and elephants, successfully attract funding from individuals and corporate donors. However, critics of this species-focused approach argue it wastes resources and often does not benefit broader biodiversity. If true, then the best way of raising conservation funds excludes the best way of spending it. Here we show that this conundrum can be resolved, and that the flagship species approach does not impede cost-effective conservation. Through a tailored prioritization approach, we identify places containing flagship species while also maximizing global biodiversity representation (based on 19,616 terrestrial and freshwater species). We then compare these results to scenarios that only maximized biodiversity representation, and demonstrate that our flagship-based approach achieves 79-89% of our objective. This provides strong evidence that prudently selected flagships can both raise funds for conservation and help target where these resources are best spent to conserve biodiversity.

Life on the edge: carnivore body size variation is all over the place.

Evolutionary biologists have long been fascinated by both the ways in which species respond to ecological conditions at the edges of their geographic ranges and the way that species' body sizes evolve across their ranges. Surprisingly, though, the relationship between these two phenomena is rarely studied. Here, we examine whether carnivore body size changes from the interior of their geographic range towards the range edges. We find that within species, body size often varies strongly with distance from the range edge. However, there is no general tendency across species for size to be either larger or smaller towards the edge. There is some evidence that the smallest guild members increase in size towards their range edges, but results for the largest guild members are equivocal. Whether individuals vary in relation to the distance from the range edges often depends on the way edge and interior are defined. Neither geographic range size nor absolute body size influences the tendency of size to vary with distance from the range edge. Therefore, we suggest that the frequent significant association between body size and the position of individuals along the edge-core continuum reflects the prevalence of geographic size variation and that the distance to range edge per se does not influence size evolution in a consistent way.

Author Correction: Prioritizing phylogenetic diversity captures functional diversity unreliably.

The original version of this Article contained a plotting error in Fig. 3g. The Serranidae and Siganidae families were misplaced in the plotted phylogeny. This error has now been corrected in the PDF and HTML versions of the Article. For comparison, the original, incorrect version of Fig. 3g is presented below as Fig. 1. The authors thank P. Cowman for identifying the plotting error.

Assessing the utility of conserving evolutionary history.

It is often claimed that conserving evolutionary history is more efficient than species-based approaches for capturing the attributes of biodiversity that benefit people. This claim underpins academic analyses and recommendations about the distribution and prioritization of species and areas for conservation, but evolutionary history is rarely considered in practical conservation activities. One impediment to implementation is that arguments related to the human-centric benefits of evolutionary history are often vague and the underlying mechanisms poorly explored. Herein we identify the arguments linking the prioritization of evolutionary history with benefits to people, and for each we explicate the purported mechanism, and evaluate its theoretical and empirical support. We find that, even after 25 years of academic research, the strength of evidence linking evolutionary history to human benefits is still fragile. Most - but not all - arguments rely on the assumption that evolutionary history is a useful surrogate for phenotypic diversity. This surrogacy relationship in turn underlies additional arguments, particularly that, by capturing more phenotypic diversity, evolutionary history will preserve greater ecosystem functioning, capture more of the natural variety that humans prefer, and allow the maintenance of future benefits to humans. A surrogate relationship between evolutionary history and phenotypic diversity appears reasonable given theoretical and empirical results, but the strength of this relationship varies greatly. To the extent that evolutionary history captures unmeasured phenotypic diversity, maximizing the representation of evolutionary history should capture variation in species characteristics that are otherwise unknown, supporting some of the existing arguments. However, there is great variation in the strength and availability of evidence for benefits associated with protecting phenotypic diversity. There are many studies finding positive biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships, but little work exists on the maintenance of future benefits or the degree to which humans prefer sets of species with high phenotypic diversity or evolutionary history. Although several arguments link the protection of evolutionary history directly with the reduction of extinction rates, and with the production of relatively greater future biodiversity via increased adaptation or diversification, there are few direct tests. Several of these putative benefits have mismatches between the relevant spatial scales for conservation actions and the spatial scales at which benefits to humans are realized. It will be important for future work to fill in some of these gaps through direct tests of the arguments we define here.

Prioritizing phylogenetic diversity captures functional diversity unreliably.

In the face of the biodiversity crisis, it is argued that we should prioritize species in order to capture high functional diversity (FD). Because species traits often reflect shared evolutionary history, many researchers have assumed that maximizing phylogenetic diversity (PD) should indirectly capture FD, a hypothesis that we name the "phylogenetic gambit". Here, we empirically test this gambit using data on ecologically relevant traits from >15,000 vertebrate species. Specifically, we estimate a measure of surrogacy of PD for FD. We find that maximizing PD results in an average gain of 18% of FD relative to random choice. However, this average gain obscures the fact that in over one-third of the comparisons, maximum PD sets contain less FD than randomly chosen sets of species. These results suggest that, while maximizing PD protection can help to protect FD, it represents a risky conservation strategy.

The global distribution of tetrapods reveals a need for targeted reptile conservation.

The distributions of amphibians, birds and mammals have underpinned global and local conservation priorities, and have been fundamental to our understanding of the determinants of global biodiversity. In contrast, the global distributions of reptiles, representing a third of terrestrial vertebrate diversity, have been unavailable. This prevented the incorporation of reptiles into conservation planning and biased our understanding of the underlying processes governing global vertebrate biodiversity. Here, we present and analyse the global distribution of 10,064 reptile species (99% of extant terrestrial species). We show that richness patterns of the other three tetrapod classes are good spatial surrogates for species richness of all reptiles combined and of snakes, but characterize diversity patterns of lizards and turtles poorly. Hotspots of total and endemic lizard richness overlap very little with those of other taxa. Moreover, existing protected areas, sites of biodiversity significance and global conservation schemes represent birds and mammals better than reptiles. We show that additional conservation actions are needed to effectively protect reptiles, particularly lizards and turtles. Adding reptile knowledge to a global complementarity conservation priority scheme identifies many locations that consequently become important. Notably, investing resources in some of the world's arid, grassland and savannah habitats might be necessary to represent all terrestrial vertebrates efficiently.