Peer-reviewed Journal Articles
Conservation International's science is the foundation for all our work. Our global science team is dedicated to advancing conservation science — pursuing actionable knowledge and amplifying it through partnerships and outreach.
To date, Conservation International has published more than 1,300 peer-reviewed articles, many in leading journals including Science, Nature and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here is an archive of our most recent research:
The commonness of rarity: Global and future distribution of rarity across land plants
Brian J. Enquist, Xiao Feng, Brad Boyle, Brian Maitner, Erica A. Newman, Peter Møller Jørgensen, Patrick R. Roehrdanz, Barbara M. Thiers, Joseph R. Burger, Richard T. Corlett, Thomas L. P. Couvreur, Gilles Dauby, John C. Donoghue, Wendy Foden, Jon C. Lovett, Pablo A. Marquet, Cory Merow, Guy Midgley, Naia Morueta-Holme, Danilo M. Neves, Ary T. Oliveira-Filho, Nathan J. B. Kraft, Daniel S. Park, Robert K. Peet, Michiel Pillet, Josep M. Serra-Diaz, Brody Sandel, Mark Schildhauer, Irena Šímová, Cyrille Violle, Jan J. Wieringa, Susan K. Wiser, Lee Hannah, Jens-Christian Svenning, Brian J. McGill
Science Advances, 5, eaaz0414
November 27, 2019
A key feature of life’s diversity is that some species are common but many more are rare. Nonetheless, at global scales, we do not know what fraction of biodiversity consists of rare species. Here, we present the largest compilation of global plant diversity to quantify the fraction of Earth’s plant biodiversity that are rare. A large fraction, ~36.5% of Earth’s ~435,000 plant species, are exceedingly rare. Sampling biases and prominent models, such as neutral theory and the k-niche model, cannot account for the observed prevalence of rarity. Our results indicate that (i) climatically more stable regions have harbored rare species and hence a large fraction of Earth’s plant species via reduced extinction risk but that (ii) climate change and human land use are now disproportionately impacting rare species. Estimates of global species abundance distributions have important implications for risk assessments and conservation planning in this era of rapid global change.
CITATION
Enquist, B. J., Feng, X., Boyle, B., Maitner, B., Newman, E. A., Jørgensen, P. M., … McGill, B. J. (2019). The commonness of rarity: Global and future distribution of rarity across land plants. Science Advances, 5(11), eaaz0414. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaz0414
