Categories: Need to know

Extinction rates are overestimated: study

Habitat loss does not play as great a role in extinction as thought

by macleans.ca on Thursday, May 19, 2011 3:45pm - 8 Comments

A new study published in the journal Nature shows that scientists are overestimating extinction rates and the role of habitat loss on species. While maintaining that habitat loss is still the primary threat to biodiversity, co-authors Professor Stephen Hubbell, from the University of California, and Professor Fangliang He, from Sun Yat-sen University in China, maintain that current measurement methods are flawed, and present figures overestimate extinction rates by up to 160 per cent. “The area that must be added to find individual of a species is, in general, much smaller than the area that must be removed to eliminate the last individual of a species,” Hubbell and Fangliang write. “Therefore, on average, it takes a much greater loss of area to cause the extinction of a species.”

BBC News

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  • Anonymous

     It matters nothing if global warming obliterates all coastal life with a tsunami-like sea-level rise inundation traveling at 1 foot/year, and the natural habitats of Alaska, Northern Canada and Russia are choked out by hybridized corn, wheat, barley, oats, and other noxious weeds. 
     
    Save the polar bears. That’s all that counts. The ursine future is at stake.

    We’re al going to burn up by 2100. Make out your wills. The end is at hand. Repent.
    .

  • Anonymous

     It matters nothing if global warming obliterates all coastal life with a tsunami-like sea-level rise inundation traveling at 1 foot/year, and the natural habitats of Alaska, Northern Canada and Russia are choked out by hybridized corn, wheat, barley, oats, and other noxious weeds. 
     
    Save the polar bears. That’s all that counts. The ursine future is at stake.

    We’re al going to burn up by 2100. Make out your wills. The end is at hand. Repent.
    .

  • Anonymous

     It matters nothing if global warming obliterates all coastal life with a tsunami-like sea-level rise inundation traveling at 1 foot/year, and the natural habitats of Alaska, Northern Canada and Russia are choked out by hybridized corn, wheat, barley, oats, and other noxious weeds. 
     
    Save the polar bears. That’s all that counts. The ursine future is at stake.

    We’re al going to burn up by 2100. Make out your wills. The end is at hand. Repent.
    .

  • bob hobbes

    I’ve done a quick look at the Nature abstract and the appendices that have been supplied. This article appears to be an exercise in biometrics; the authors are ecological statisticians who are re-interpreting data in order to revise predictive models. Before the “flat-earthers” start driving their Humvees in triumphant circles around burning mounds of climate data reports they should remember that this type of statistical science is in the same realm as that which the investment banks used to navigate us into the financial mess we’re in today.

  • Anonymous

     DON’T underestimate the destructive force of man towards mother earth.

    I haven’t seen a bee pollinate a flower in years and I live
    in California.

  • Anonymous

     DON’T underestimate the destructive force of man towards mother earth.

    I haven’t seen a bee pollinate a flower in years and I live
    in California.

  • Walter Bruno

    Speaking of the politicised Academy and research, here’s a link to a recent blog article I’ve done. The topic is Research Ethics Boards and their role in preventing certain questions from being asked.   Link:.http://rescumi.blogspot.com/2011/05/on-banning-of-research-questions.html

  • Walter Bruno

    Speaking of the politicised Academy and research, here’s a link to a recent blog article I’ve done. The topic is Research Ethics Boards and their role in preventing certain questions from being asked.   Link:.http://rescumi.blogspot.com/2011/05/on-banning-of-research-questions.html

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