A study led by Brazilian researchers and reported in an article published on January 11 in the journal Science shows that 82% of the more than 2,000 species of trees found only in the Atlantic Rainforest biome are threatened with extinction to some degree, while 65% of all 4,950 tree species present in the biome, including non-endemics, are endangered.
This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:
A study published in the journal Science shows for the first time the degree of threat to all tree species in the biome, classifying 65% as vulnerable or endangered to some extent. According to the authors, their findings are conservative—the actual situation could be even more alarming. Credit: Anderson Kassner-Filho/Floresta SC
This is the first time the degree of threat to all populations of all tree species in Brazil's Atlantic Rainforest biome has been assessed using the criteria of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), whose Red List of Endangered Species is considered a critical indicator of the health of the world's biodiversity.
"The number [82% of endemic species threatened] came as a shock. We took forest availability into account for each species, whether or not it was healthy forest, for example. Not all species are able to survive in degraded fragments, so the actual situation may be even more alarming," said Renato Lima, corresponding author of the article.
Lima is a professor at the University of São Paulo's Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture (ESALQ-USP) in Piracicaba, São Paulo state, Brazil. His postdoctoral research at the Institute of Biosciences (IB-USP) included part of the study.
The authors conducted an automated conservation assessment of the 5,000-odd species using more than 800,000 herbarium records and 1.3 million tree counts from forest inventories, as well as information on species life histories, commercial uses, and long time series of habitat loss. The data for forest inventories was obtained from TreeCo, a repository administered by Lima.
Another troubling discovery was…
André Julião
phys.org