Authors
Neil Cox, Bruce E Young, Philip Bowles, Miguel Fernandez, Julie Marin, Giovanni Rapacciuolo, Monika Böhm, Thomas M Brooks, S Blair Hedges, Craig Hilton-Taylor, Michael Hoffmann, Richard KB Jenkins, Marcelo F Tognelli, Graham J Alexander, Allen Allison, Natalia B Ananjeva, Mark Auliya, Luciano Javier Avila, David G Chapple, Diego F Cisneros-Heredia, Harold G Cogger, Guarino R Colli, Anslem de Silva, Carla C Eisemberg, Johannes Els, Ansel Fong G, Tandora D Grant, Rodney A Hitchmough, Djoko T Iskandar, Noriko Kidera, Marcio Martins, Shai Meiri, Nicola J Mitchell, Sanjay Molur, Cristiano de C Nogueira, Juan Carlos Ortiz, Johannes Penner, Anders GJ Rhodin, Gilson A Rivas, Mark-Oliver Rödel, Uri Roll, Kate L Sanders, Georgina Santos-Barrera, Glenn M Shea, Stephen Spawls, Bryan L Stuart, Krystal A Tolley, Jean-François Trape, Marcela A Vidal, Philipp Wagner, Bryan P Wallace, Yan Xie
Publication date
2022/5
Journal
Nature
Volume
605
Issue
7909
Pages
285-290
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Description
Comprehensive assessments of species’ extinction risks have documented the extinction crisis 1 and underpinned strategies for reducing those risks 2. Global assessments reveal that, among tetrapods, 40.7% of amphibians, 25.4% of mammals and 13.6% of birds are threatened with extinction 3. Because global assessments have been lacking, reptiles have been omitted from conservation-prioritization analyses that encompass other tetrapods 4, 5, 6, 7. Reptiles are unusually diverse in arid regions, suggesting that they may have different conservation needs 6. Here we provide a comprehensive extinction-risk assessment of reptiles and show that at least 1,829 out of 10,196 species (21.1%) are threatened—confirming a previous extrapolation 8 and representing 15.6 billion years of phylogenetic diversity. Reptiles are threatened by the same major factors that threaten other tetrapods—agriculture, logging, urban …
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Scholar articles
N Cox, BE Young, P Bowles, M Fernandez, J Marin… - Nature, 2022