The Conservative Cave
Interests => The Science Club => Topic started by: CG6468 on May 20, 2011, 12:31:51 PM
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Extinction reports are greatly exaggerated
Thursday, 19 May 2011
by Iain Coleman
Cosmos Online
EDINBURGH: Predictions of how many species go extinct when habitat is lost are fundamentally flawed, according to new research.
Many estimates of extinction rates due to human activity, including those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), will now have to be revised downward.
"We have proved mathematically where this overestimate comes from, and in this paper we provide a correct method," said Fangliang He of Sun Yat-sen University in China, co-author of the paper published in Nature this week.
"Based on the mathematical proof and empirical data, we prove that the overestimate can be as much as 160%, so previous estimates should be divided by roughly 2.5."
A mathematical flaw
The extinction of species when their habitats are lost is the dominant problem facing conservationists today, and human activities including climate change are destroying habitats at an unprecedented rate.
The most widely used method for estimating extinction rates is based on the species-area relationship (SAR). If you sample a particular area, you count a certain number of species. If you then increase the area you are sampling, the number of species you count will also increase.
The resulting curve of species against area is the SAR. Until now, it has been commonplace to estimate extinction rates by moving backwards along this curve: if the habitat shrinks, the number of species in it was also assumed to shrink in an exact reversal of the SAR.
160% Exaggerations? (http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/4326/extinction-reports-have-been-greatly-exaggerated)
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IMO, a species will either assimilate to the new environment, move or die off. Dying off is generally the very last thing a species will do. Look at bear & deer. They have either assimilated to the new environment, moved, or sometimes, even both. It's pretty much against nature for a species to just die off.