More losers than winners: investigating Anthropocene defaunation through the diversity of population trends

The global-scale decline of animal biodiversity ('defaunation') represents one of the most alarming consequences of human impacts on the planet. The quantification of this extinction crisis has traditionally relied on the use of IUCN Red List conservation categories assigned to each assessed species. This approach reveals that a quarter of the world's animal species are currently threatened with extinction, and ~1% have been declared extinct. However, extinctions are preceded by progressive population declines through time that leave demographic 'footprints' that can alert us about the trajectories of species towards extinction. Therefore, an exclusive focus on IUCN conservation categories, without…

• AN
  Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación
• QU
  Queen's University Belfast
• QU
  Queen's University
• DF
  Directorate for Biological Sciences
• NE
  Natural Environment Research Council
• SN
  Sistema Nacional de Investigadores