When it comes to extinction, body size matters

Date:  February 13, 2018

Source:  Santa Fe Institute

Summary:

Models for extinction risk are necessarily simple. Most reduce complex ecological systems to a linear relationship between resource density and population growth -- something that can be broadly applied to infer how much resource loss a species can survive. This week in Nature Communications, an interdisciplinary team of scientists proposes a more nuanced model for extinction that also shows why animal species tend to evolve toward larger body sizes.

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Climate change causes high but predictable extinction risks

Date:

February 26, 2014

Source:

Stony Brook University

Summary:

Judging the effects of climate change on extinction may be easier than previously thought, according to a new article. Although widely used assessments of threatened species, such as the IUCN Red List, were not developed with the effects of climate change in mind, a study of 36 amphibian and reptile species endemic to the US has concluded that climate change may not be fundamentally different from other extinction threats in terms of identifying species in danger of extinction.

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