Coextinctions dominate future vertebrate losses from climate and land use change.
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Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36525487.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1126/sciadv.abn4345 and PMC identifier 9757742.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Although theory identifies coextinctions as a main driver of biodiversity loss, their role at the planetary scale has yet to be estimated. We subjected a global model of interconnected terrestrial vertebrate food webs to future (2020-2100) climate and land-use changes. We predict a 17.6% (± 0.16% SE) average reduction of local vertebrate diversity globally by 2100, with coextinctions increasing the effect of primary extinctions by 184.2% (± 10.9% SE) on average under an intermediate emissions scenario. Communities will lose up to a half of ecological interactions, thus reducing trophic complexity, network connectance, and community resilience. The model reveals that the extreme toll of global change for vertebrate diversity might be of secondary importance compared to the damages to ecological network structure.