Publication Date:
2015-04-04
Description:
Human activities, especially conversion and degradation of habitats, are causing global biodiversity declines. How local ecological assemblages are responding is less clear--a concern given their importance for many ecosystem functions and services. We analysed a terrestrial assemblage database of unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage to quantify local biodiversity responses to land use and related changes. Here we show that in the worst-affected habitats, these pressures reduce within-sample species richness by an average of 76.5%, total abundance by 39.5% and rarefaction-based richness by 40.3%. We estimate that, globally, these pressures have already slightly reduced average within-sample richness (by 13.6%), total abundance (10.7%) and rarefaction-based richness (8.1%), with changes showing marked spatial variation. Rapid further losses are predicted under a business-as-usual land-use scenario; within-sample richness is projected to fall by a further 3.4% globally by 2100, with losses concentrated in biodiverse but economically poor countries. Strong mitigation can deliver much more positive biodiversity changes (up to a 1.9% average increase) that are less strongly related to countries' socioeconomic status.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Newbold, Tim -- Hudson, Lawrence N -- Hill, Samantha L L -- Contu, Sara -- Lysenko, Igor -- Senior, Rebecca A -- Borger, Luca -- Bennett, Dominic J -- Choimes, Argyrios -- Collen, Ben -- Day, Julie -- De Palma, Adriana -- Diaz, Sandra -- Echeverria-Londono, Susy -- Edgar, Melanie J -- Feldman, Anat -- Garon, Morgan -- Harrison, Michelle L K -- Alhusseini, Tamera -- Ingram, Daniel J -- Itescu, Yuval -- Kattge, Jens -- Kemp, Victoria -- Kirkpatrick, Lucinda -- Kleyer, Michael -- Correia, David Laginha Pinto -- Martin, Callum D -- Meiri, Shai -- Novosolov, Maria -- Pan, Yuan -- Phillips, Helen R P -- Purves, Drew W -- Robinson, Alexandra -- Simpson, Jake -- Tuck, Sean L -- Weiher, Evan -- White, Hannah J -- Ewers, Robert M -- Mace, Georgina M -- Scharlemann, Jorn P W -- Purvis, Andy -- BB/F017324/1/Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/United Kingdom -- England -- Nature. 2015 Apr 2;520(7545):45-50. doi: 10.1038/nature14324.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉1] United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UK. [2] Computational Science Laboratory, Microsoft Research Cambridge, 21 Station Road, Cambridge CB1 2FB, UK. ; Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK. ; 1] United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UK. [2] Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK. ; Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Silwood Park, London SL5 7PY, UK. ; United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UK. ; Department of Biosciences, College of Science, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK. ; 1] Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, UK. [2] Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Silwood Park, London SL5 7PY, UK. ; Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK. ; Instituto Multidisciplinario de Biologia Vegetal (CONICET-UNC) and FCEFyN, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba, Casilla de Correo 495, 5000 Cordoba, Argentina. ; Deptartment of Zoology, Faculty of Life Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, 6997801 Tel Aviv, Israel. ; 1] Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, Hans Knoll Strasse 10, 07743 Jena, Germany. [2] German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig, Deutscher Platz 5e, 04103 Leipzig, Germany. ; Landscape Ecology Group, Institute of Biology and Environmental Sciences, University of Oldenburg, D-26111 Oldenburg, Germany. ; Computational Science Laboratory, Microsoft Research Cambridge, 21 Station Road, Cambridge CB1 2FB, UK. ; Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RB, UK. ; Biology Department, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, Eau Claire, Wisconsin 54701, USA. ; 1] United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre, 219 Huntingdon Road, Cambridge CB3 0DL, UK. [2] School of Life Sciences, University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QG, UK.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25832402" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Biodiversity
;
Conservation of Natural Resources/trends
;
Ecology/trends
;
History, 16th Century
;
History, 17th Century
;
History, 18th Century
;
History, 19th Century
;
History, 20th Century
;
History, 21st Century
;
*Human Activities
;
Models, Biological
;
Population Dynamics
;
Species Specificity
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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