Geography of current and future global mammal extinction risk

RESEARCH ARTICLE Geography of current and future global mammal extinction risk Ana D. Davidson1,2¤*, Kevin T. Shoemaker3, Ben Weinstein1, Gabriel C. Costa4, Thomas M. Brooks5,6,7, Gerardo Ceballos8, Volker C. Radeloff9, Carlo Rondinini10, Catherine H. Graham1,11 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Davidson AD, Shoemaker KT, Weinstein B, Costa GC, Brooks TM, Ceballos G, et al. (2017) Geography of current and future global mammal extinction risk. PLoS ONE 12(11): e0186934. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186934 Editor: Jason M. Kamilar, University of Massachusetts Amherst, UNITED STATES Received: December 30, 2016 Accepted: October 10, 2017 Published: November 16, 2017 Copyright: © 2017 Davidson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: The data underlying this study are available from the following previously published works: Jones KE, et al. PanTHERIA: a species-level database of life history, ecology, and geography of extant and recently extinct mammals. Ecology. 2009;90:2648–2648. Davidson AD, Hamilton MJ, Boyer AG, Brown JH, Ceballos G. Multiple ecological pathways to extinction in mammals. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A [Internet]. 2009 Jun 30;106(26):10702–5. Funding: Our research was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Dimensions of Biodiversity 1 Department of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, United States of America, 2 NatureServe, Arlington, Virginia, United States of America, 3 Department of Natural Resources & Environmental Science, University of Nevada, Reno, Nevada, United States of America, 4 Department of Biology, Auburn University at Montgomery, Montgomery, Alabama, United States of America, 5 International Union for Conservation of Nature, Gland, Switzerland, 6 World Agroforestry Center, University of the Philippines Los Baños, Laguna, Philippines, 7 Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, 8 Instituto de Ecologia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, México D.F., México, 9 Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America, 10 Global Mammal Assessment program, Department of Biology and Biotechnologies, Sapienza University of Rome, Roma, Italy, 11 Unit of Biodiversity and Conservation, Swiss Federal Research Institute, Birmensdorf, Switzerland Unit of Biodiversity and Conservation, Swiss Federal Research Institute (WSL), Birmensdorf, Switzerland ¤ Current address: Colorado Natural Heritage Program and Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Conservation Biology, Warner College of Natural Resources, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, United States of America * Abstract Identifying which species are at greatest risk, what makes them vulnerable, and where they are distributed are central goals for conservation science. While knowledge of which factors influence extinction risk is increasingly available for some taxonomic groups, a deeper understanding of extinction correlates and the geography of risk remains lacking. Here, we develop a predictive random forest model using both geospatial and mammalian species’ trait data to uncover the statistical and geographic distributions of extinction correlates. We also explore how this geography of risk may change under a rapidly warming climate. We found distinctive macroecological relationships between species-level risk and extinction correlates, including the intrinsic biological traits of geographic range size, body size and taxonomy, and extrinsic geographic settings such as seasonality, habitat type, land use and human population density. Each extinction correlate exhibited ranges of values that were especially associated with risk, and the importance of different risk factors was not geographically uniform across the globe. We also found that about 10% of mammals not currently recognized as at-risk have biological traits and occur in environments that predispose them towards extinction. Southeast Asia had the most actually and potentially threatened species, underscoring the urgent need for conservation in this region. Additionally, nearly 40% of currently threatened species were predicted to experience rapid climate change at 0.5 km/year or more. Biological and environmental correlates of mammalian extinction risk exhibit distinct statistical and geographic distributions. These results provide insight into species-level patterns and processes underlying geographic variation in extinction risk. PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0186934 November 16, 2017 1 / 18 Geography of global mammal extinction risk program (grant DEB-1136586). ADD, BW, and CHG were supported by NSF grant DEB-1136586, and KTS was supported by NSF grant DEB1146198. GCC was supported by CNPq grants 302776/2012-5 and 563352/2010-8. GCC, CHG., and ADD were also supported by CAPES/Science without Borders grant PVE 018/2012, and VCR by the NASA Biodiversity Program. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. They also offer guidance for future conservation research focused on specific geographic regions, or evaluating the degree to which species-level patterns mirror spatial variation in the pressures faced by populations within the ranges of individual species. The added impacts from climate change may increase the susceptibility of at-risk species to extinction and expand the regions where mammals are most vulnerable globally. Introduction Human impacts are causing widespread biodiversity loss, with rates of extinction that are about 1,000 times greater than background levels [1–3]. One-fifth of all vertebrates are threatened with extinction [4]. With human population expected to grow from 7.6 billion to more than 9 billion over the next few decades, and consumption rising even faster, humanity’s impact on the planet’s biodiversity is projected to increase substantially [5]. Knowledge of which species are at greatest risk, why, and where they are most vulnerable is consequently a central goal for conservation science. Yet, large gaps in our knowledge of species threat exist, even for well-studied taxa [6]. For example, assessment of risk under the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species has only been completed for 66% of all vertebrates, of which 15% are assessed as Data Deficient (DD), lacking sufficient information to determine their conservation status [7,8]. Further, while factors influencing extinction risk have been identified [9–11], we lack systematic investigation of the geographic patterns of importa (...truncated)