Latent extinction risk and the future battlegrounds of mammal conservation

Global conservation prioritization usually emphasizes areas with highest species richness or where many species are thought to be at imminent risk of extinction. However, these strategies may overlook areas where many species have biological traits that make them particularly sensitive to future human impact but are not yet threatened because such impact is currently low. In this article, we identify such areas for the world's mammals using latent extinction risk, the discrepancy between a species' current extinction risk and that predicted from models on the basis of biological traits. Species with positive latent risk are currently less threatened than their biology would suggest, usually because they inhabit...

Categories: Publication; Types: Citation; Tags: *Conservation of Natural Resources, *Ecosystem, *Mammals/classification, Animals, Biological, All tags... Databases, Factual, Humans, Models, Phylogeny, Risk, Statistical, Fewer tags