Species–area relationships always overestimate extinction rates from habitat loss

Fangliang He () and Stephen P. Hubbell ()
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Fangliang He: State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol and School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University
Stephen P. Hubbell: University of California

Nature, 2011, vol. 473, issue 7347, 368-371

Abstract: Getting a handle on extinction rates There is broad agreement that Earth is facing a biodiversity crisis, but estimating extinction rates remains a daunting task, not least because it is almost impossible to determine when the very last individual of a species has died. Fangliang He and Stephen Hubbell demonstrate that a widely used indirect method of estimating extinction rates — based on backward extrapolation of species–area relationship data — tends to overestimate the problem. As an example, they cite data on passerine bird species in the United States. He and Hubbell stress that habitat loss remains a real and growing threat to biodiversity, although we need to develop more reliable means of monitoring the situation.

Date: 2011
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DOI: 10.1038/nature09985

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