MAY 6, 2019
by Cell Press
At least a
quarter of the world's approximately 8,000 known species of amphibian are
recognized as threatened and at risk of extinction. But due to a lack of data
on many amphibian species, only about 44 percent of amphibians have up-to-date
assessments on their risk of extinction, compared to nearly 100 percent of both
birds and mammals. Now, researchers reporting May 6 in the journal Current
Biology have used known ecological, geographical, and evolutionary
attributes of these data-deficient species to model their extinction risk—and
their assessment suggests that at least another 1,000 species are threatened.
"We
found that more than 1,000 data-deficient amphibians are threatened with
extinction, and nearly 500 are Endangered or Critically Endangered, mainly in
South America and Southeast Asia," said Pamela González-del-Pliego of the
University of Sheffield and Yale University. "Urgent conservation actions
are needed to avert the loss of these species."
The lack of
information on these species results from high rates of new species description
together with a lag in assessment rates in the last 15 years, she explains. All
told, about 2,200 amphibian
species had been deemed data deficient. Their extinction risk status
simply wasn't known.
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