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Extinction debt refers to the delay
of decades or even centuries between humans destroying an ecosystem and leading to the demise of species living within that ecosystem.
Forests are an important pillar of biodiversity, maintaining nearly 80 per cent of biodiversity
, although they cover only 30 per cent of the global land surface.
The global biodiversity crisis is closely linked
to the shrinkage and fragmentation of forest habitats.
In response to the crisis, governments and organizations have established vast protected areas
around the globe over the past two centuries.
However, due to the lack of centuries-long data on habitat changes, it is impossible to determine how strong the signals of extinction debt are and when those debts
began.
In addition, it is unclear whether established protected areas globally play a positive role
in mitigating the build-up of species extinction debt.
Answering these questions is of great significance
for the formulation of species extinction prevention measures in the context of global change and the efficient implementation of biodiversity conservation.
Figure 1: The Sichuan takin (Budorcas taxicolor tibetanaMilne-Edwards, 1874) inhabiting a natural forest in the Tangjiahe Nature Reserve in Guangyuan, Sichuan Province (Photo by Jiang Zhiyou, Rural Corridor).
In response to these questions, the researchers compiled the most comprehensive organisms to date (the natural ranges of 6120 reptiles, 4278 mammals and 6047 amphibians with forests as their main habitat), physical geography (BC Global year-by-year forest cover dataset from 1500 to 1992) and ecological (over 250,000 protected areas, 867 ecoregions and 14 biome) dataset, with historical evidence that the global debt for the extinction of terrestrial vertebrates began in the mid-19th century, at the beginning
of the Second Industrial Revolution.
Until the mid-19th century, the correlation between terrestrial vertebrate richness and forest cover was relatively stable
.
However, since then and into modern times, the correlation between the two has rapidly diminished
.
Strong signs of extinction debt were also detected in vertebrate taxa with a high risk of extinction (vulnerable, endangered, and critically endangered
).
Regionally, with the exception of tropical and subtropical broadleaf forests, the correlation patterns of forest biomes mostly follow similar global trends
.
The study reveals that the beginning of the Second Industrial Revolution is the earliest signal of global forest-dwelling vertebrate extinction debt, suggesting that habitat changes related to human activities are beginning to bring delayed biodiversity loss
.
More importantly, the mitigating effect of global protected areas on terrestrial vertebrate extinction debt accumulation is not as immediate as it is for slowing forest cover, but has a significant time lag effect
.
This phenomenon is particularly pronounced in vertebrate taxa inhabiting taiga and temperate coniferous forests, suggesting that it will take at least a few decades for established protected areas globally over the past two centuries to effectively slow biodiversity loss
.
As terrestrial vertebrate richness and forest habitat inequalities continue to occur, preventive measures should be taken to find a good balance between forest restoration, protected area development and biodiversity conservation strategies to reduce the high cost
of global terrestrial vertebrate debt accumulation.
In conclusion, this systematic macro-ecological analysis work provides important insights
for a better understanding of the biodiversity crisis in the context of global environmental change.
The results, titled "Half-millennium evidence suggests that extinction debts of global vertebrates started in the Second Industrial Revolution," were recently published in Nature Biology Top journal Communications Biology
.
Dr.
Ziyan Liao of Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences is the first author of the paper, researcher Youhua Chen is the corresponding author, and researcher Peng Shushi of the School of Urban and Environmental Sciences of Peking University is the second author
of the paper.
The research was awarded the Strategic Leading Science and Technology Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Category B) (XDB31000000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China Regional Innovation and Development Joint Key Project (U21A20192), and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (National Key Research and Development Program 2020YFE0203200) and postdoctoral fellowship (2022M713073) and other projects
.
Original link
Figure 2: Global forest cover change and abundance patterns of forest-dwelling terrestrial vertebrates
