Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T05:21:09.068Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

16 - Does Geometry Dominate Extinction due to Habitat Loss?

from Part IV - The Species–Area Relationship in Applied Ecology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2021

By
Athanasios S. Kallimanis  and
John M. Halley
Edited by
Thomas J. Matthews ,
Kostas A. Triantis  and
Robert J. Whittaker
Thomas J. Matthews
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Kostas A. Triantis
Affiliation:
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Robert J. Whittaker
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

We simulate habitat loss and derive species accumulation curves (SAC) and endemics–area relationship curves (EAR) in order to predict expected extinctions. The EAR may have a very different shape depending on the geometry of habitat loss. If area is lost in a spatially random way we may preserve more species than if area is lost in a clustered way, but with a larger extinction debt. If area is lost continuously inwards (‘inward EAR’) then the immediate loss of species can be much greater than if the same area is lost from the core towards its edge (‘outward EAR’). The main reason for these effects is the spatial autocorrelation of species distributions and the definition of endemics. Spatial autocorrelation means that sampling plots that are clustered are occupied by communities with more similar composition. If endemism is defined in relation to the study area, we can observe great species losses at the edge due to the large numbers of ranges that intersect the study area edge, but most of these species persist outside the study area. If instead we examine endemism on a global scale then the pattern of species losses is not influenced by the geometry of habitat loss.

Keywords

Species–area relationshiphabitat lossbiodiversity conservationspecies accumulation curveendemics–area relationshipextinction debtspatial pattern of habitat lossendemism
Type
Chapter
Information
The Species–Area Relationship
Theory and Application
 , pp. 399 - 416
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andrle, R. F. & Carroll, J. R. (eds.) (1988) The atlas of breeding birds in New York State. New York: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, T. M., Mittermeier, R. A., da Fonseca, G. A., Gerlach, J., Hoffmann, M., Lamoreux, J. F., Mittermeier, C. G., Pilgrim, J. D. & Rodrigues, A. S. (2006) Global biodiversity conservation priorities. Science, 313, 58–61.Google Scholar
Dengler, J. & Oldeland, J. (2010) Effects of sampling protocol on the shapes of species richness curves. Journal of Biogeography, 37, 1698–1705.Google Scholar
Diamond, J. M. (1972) Biogeographic kinetics: Estimation of relaxation times for avifaunas of southwest Pacific islands. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 69, 3199–3203.Google Scholar
Diniz‐Filho, J. A. F., Bini, L. M. & Hawkins, B. A. (2003) Spatial autocorrelation and red herrings in geographical ecology. Global Ecology & Biogeography, 12, 53–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fattorini, S. & Borges, P. A. (2012) Species–area relationships underestimate extinction rates. Acta Oecologica, 40, 27–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, J. L. & Ostling, A. (2003) Endemics–area relationships: The influence of species dominance and spatial aggregation. Ecology, 84, 3090–3097.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Halley, J. M. & Iwasa, Y. (2011) Neutral theory as a predictor of avifaunal extinctions after habitat loss. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 108, 2316–2321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Halley, J. M., Monokrousos, N., Mazaris, A. D., Newmark, W. D. & Vokou, D. (2016) Dynamics of extinction debt across five taxonomic groups. Nature Communications, 7, 12283.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Halley, J. M., Sgardeli, V. & Monokrousos, N. (2013) Species–area relationships and extinction forecasts. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1286, 50–61.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Halley, J. M., Sgardeli, V. & Triantis, K. A. (2014) Extinction debt and the species–area relationship: A neutral perspective. Global Ecology & Biogeography, 23, 113–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
He, F. & Hubbell, S. P. (2011) Species–area relationships always overestimate extinction rates from habitat loss. Nature, 473, 368.Google Scholar
IUCN (2019) The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. www.iucnredlist.org.Google Scholar
Kallimanis, A. S., Kunin, W. E., Halley, J. M. & Sgardelis, S. P. (2005) Metapopulation extinction risk under spatially autocorrelated disturbance. Conservation Biology, 19, 534–546.Google Scholar
Keil, P., Pereira, H. M., Cabral, J. S., Chase, J. M., May, F., Martins, I. S. & Winter, M. (2018) Spatial scaling of extinction rates: Theory and data reveal nonlinearity and a major upscaling and downscaling challenge. Global Ecology & Biogeography, 27, 2–13.Google Scholar
Keil, P., Storch, D. & Jetz, W. (2015) On the decline of biodiversity due to area loss. Nature Communications, 6, 8837.Google Scholar
Kinzig, A. P. & Harte, J. (2000) Implications of endemics–area relationships for estimates of species extinctions. Ecology, 81, 3305–3311.Google Scholar
Kuussaari, M., Bommarco, R., Heikkinen, R. K., Helm, A., Krauss, J., Lindborg, R., Öckinger, E., Pärtel, M., Pino, J., Rodà, F. & Stefanescu, C. (2009) Extinction debt: A challenge for biodiversity conservation. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 24, 564–571.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lazarina, M., Kallimanis, A. S., Pantis, J. D. & Sgardelis, S. P. (2014) Linking species richness curves from non-contiguous sampling to contiguous-nested SAR: An empirical study. Acta Oecologica, 61, 24–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Legendre, P. (1993) Spatial autocorrelation: Trouble or new paradigm? Ecology, 74, 1659–1673.Google Scholar
Matias, M. G., Gravel, D., Guilhaumon, F., Desjardins‐Proulx, P., Loreau, M., Münkemüller, T. & Mouquet, N. (2014) Estimates of species extinctions from species–area relationships strongly depend on ecological context. Ecography, 37, 431–442.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pan, X. (2013) Fundamental equations for species–area theory. Scientific Reports, 3, 1334.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pereira, H. M., Borda-de-Água, L. & Martins, I. S. (2012) Geometry and scale in species–area relationships. Nature, 482, E3.Google Scholar
Pimm, S. L., Jenkins, C. N., Abell, R., Brooks, T. M., Gittleman, J. L., Joppa, L. N., Raven, P. H., Roberts, C. M. & Sexton, J. O. (2014) The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution, and protection. Science, 344, 1246752.Google Scholar
Rahbek, C. (2005) The role of spatial scale and the perception of large‐scale species‐richness patterns. Ecology Letters, 8, 224–239.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rahbek, C. & Colwell, R. K. (2011) Biodiversity: Species loss revisited. Nature, 473, 288.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rybicki, J. & Hanski, I. (2013) Species–area relationships and extinctions caused by habitat loss and fragmentation. Ecology Letters, 16, 27–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Scheiner, S. M., Chiarucci, A., Fox, G. A., Helmus, M. R., McGlinn, D. J. & Willig, M. R. (2011) The underpinnings of the relationship of species richness with space and time. Ecological Monographs, 81, 195–213.Google Scholar
Šizling, A. L., Kunin, W. E., Šizlingová, E., Reif, J. & Storch, D. (2011) Between geometry and biology: The problem of universality of the species–area relationship. The American Naturalist, 178, 602–611.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Soininen, J., McDonald, R. & Hillebrand, H. (2007) The distance decay of similarity in ecological communities. Ecography, 30, 3–12.Google Scholar
Steinbauer, M. J., Dolos, K., Reineking, B. & Beierkuhnlein, C. (2012) Current measures for distance decay in similarity of species composition are influenced by study extent and grain size. Global Ecology & Biogeography, 21, 1203–1212.Google Scholar
Tsianou, M. A., Koutsias, N., Mazaris, A. D. & Kallimanis, A. S. (2016) Climate and landscape explain richness patterns depending on the type of species’ distribution data. Acta Oecologica, 74, 19–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ulrich, W. & Buszko, J. (2005) Detecting biodiversity hotspots using species–area and endemics–area relationships: The case of butterflies. Biodiversity and Conservation, 14, 1977–1988.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×