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What drives at-risk species richness? Environmental factors are more influential than anthropogenic factors or biological traits

Howard, C.; Flather, C.H.; Stephens, P.A.

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Authors

C. Howard

C.H. Flather



Abstract

Species at risk of extinction are not uniformly distributed in space. Concentrations of threatened species may occur where threatening processes are intense, in refuges from those processes, or in areas of high species diversity. However, there have been few attempts to identify the processes that explain the distribution of at‐risk species. Here, we identified the relative importance of biological traits, environmental factors, and anthropogenic stressors in driving the spatial patterns of both total and at‐risk species richness of North American mammals and birds. Environmental factors are the predominant drivers of both total and at‐risk species richness. Strikingly, the directions of variable relationships differ substantially between models of total and at‐risk species richness. Understanding how environmental gradients differentially drive variation in total and at‐risk species richness can inform conservation action. Moreover, our approach can predict shifts in at‐risk species concentrations in response to projected environmental change and anthropogenic stressors.

Citation

Howard, C., Flather, C., & Stephens, P. (2019). What drives at-risk species richness? Environmental factors are more influential than anthropogenic factors or biological traits. Conservation Letters, 12(2), Article e12624. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12624

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 25, 2018
Online Publication Date Dec 13, 2018
Publication Date Mar 31, 2019
Deposit Date Nov 26, 2018
Publicly Available Date Apr 17, 2019
Journal Conservation Letters
Publisher Society for Conservation Biology
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 12
Issue 2
Article Number e12624
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12624

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Published Journal Article (Advance online version) (963 Kb)
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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Advance online version © 2018 The Authors. Conservation Letters published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.





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