Speaker
Description
Understanding the patterns and drivers of plant extinction is crucial for anticipating biodiversity dynamics under ongoing global change. Species niches, defined in geographic and climatic space, and particularly species’ positions within niche space are known to influence regional extinction. Thus, regional extinctions are unlikely to be evenly distributed across niche space due to variation in optimal and suboptimal conditions along niche gradients.
Here, we investigate how plant species’ positions in niche space influence extinction risk. We test whether regional extinctions occur at niche margins, as predicted by the abundant center hypothesis (i.e., extinctions moving inward as conditions diverge from optima), or across the niche space, as proposed by the contagion hypothesis , where habitat transformation may create marginal fragments. Using a newly integrated dataset of harmonized regional Red Lists of plant species worldwide, expert range maps, and climatic data, we estimated the geographic and climatic niche space of 399 plant species and quantified the marginality of regional extinctions within this space.
Our preliminary results show that regional plant extinctions do not follow a single pattern. Marginal extinctions suggest that some plant species may be more vulnerable under less optimal climatic and habitat conditions, whereas extinctions occurring at the core or throughout niche space may indicate the influence of human-driven pressures (e.g., habitat transformation), which can force species to persist in peripheral areas. This variability suggests that extinction dynamics are shaped by a combination of ecological constraints and anthropogenic pressures, whose relative importance may differ among species. By integrating geographic and environmental dimensions of niche space, our study helps clarify how regional extinction risk is distributed across species’ ranges, thereby supporting conservation efforts.
| Status Group | Postdoctoral Researcher |
|---|---|
| FOR TALKS: Poster Presentation Option | No, I prefer to present only as a talk. |