Synergies among extinction drivers under global change.

By Barry W. Brook, N. Sodhi, Corey J. A. Bradshaw. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 2008

1,897 citations recorded by the source corpus.

If habitat destruction or overexploitation of populations is severe, species loss can occur directly and abruptly. Yet the final descent to extinction is often driven by synergistic processes (amplifying feedbacks) that can be disconnected from the original cause of decline. We review recent observational, experimental and meta-analytic work which together show that owing to interacting and self-reinforcing processes, estimates of extinction risk for most species are more severe than previously recognised. As such, conservation actions which only target single-threat drivers risk being inadequate because of the cascading effects caused by unmanaged synergies. Future work should focus on how climate change will interact with and accelerate ongoing threats to biodiversity, such as habitat degradation, overexploitation and invasive species.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/49c3d15df0ebc80113ed8d88a239089e18bc3495

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Citations in the corpus

Effects of climate change and fisheries bycatch on Southern Ocean seabirds : a review (2012, neutral): “…variables (Mysterud et al. 2001, Gimenez & Barbraud 2009), density dependence (Frederiksen et al. 2001, Lima et al. 2002), synergistic effects with other environmental factors (Brook et al. 2008), or microevolutionary changes (Kinnison & Hairston 2007, Coulson et al. 2010, Ozgul et al. 2010).”
The sixth mass extinction: Anthropocene and the human impact on biodiversity (2014, background): “According to the most recent models (Arens and West 2008; Brook et al. 2008), a mass extinction will only occur when a synergy between unusual events happens, like in a ‘‘perfect storm’’ when different critical parameters converge.”
Adapting to climate change: a perspective from evolutionary physiology (2010, background): “Moreover, synergistic interactions among climate and other factors are expected (Brook et al. 2008).”
Insect responses to global change offer signposts for biodiversity and conservation (2020, background): “Pressures including habitat modification, overexploitation, pollution, invasive species, and climate change continue to increase and are together characterised as global change (Brook et al., 2008; Butchart et al., 2010; IPBES, 2019; Sage, 2020).”
The decline of moths in Great Britain: a review of possible causes (2013, background): “Evidence from other taxa suggests that multiple drivers of population change are likely to interact, often in complex ways, and may produce synergies (Travis, 2003; Brook et al., 2008).”
Early detection of aquatic invaders using metabarcoding reveals a high number of non‐indigenous species in Canadian ports (2016, background): “Continuing climate change, habitat alteration and species exploitation, along with the accelerated movement of species across the globe, have left ecosystems particularly vulnerable to invasion (Brook et al., 2008).”
Meta‐analysis reveals the importance of matrix composition for animals in fragmented habitat (2011, background): “This goal is of urgent pragmatic utility, because only by effectively characterizing the factors that govern organism distribution can we implement successful conservation and restoration strategies in the face of an anthropogenic biodiversity crisis that threatens many of the world’s species with e”
Tropical tree community shifts: Implications for wildlife conservation (2010, background): “Conservation managers in such reserves have thus placed much emphasis on immediate challenging issues such as habitat loss (Brooks et al., 2002), bushmeat hunting (Fa et al., 2002; Laurance et al., 2008), and recently climate change (Chapman et al., 2006; Malcolm et al., 2006; Brook et al., 2008).”