Journal
SCIENCE ADVANCES
Volume 6, Issue 32, Pages -Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb8458
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Funding
- USU Ecology Center
- USU Graduate Enhancement Award
- Early Career Research Fellowship from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
- Utah State University-Utah Agricultural Experiment Station [9282]
- NSF [ABI-1759965, EF-1802605]
- U.S. Forest Service [18-CS-11046000-041]
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As a result of their extensive home ranges and slow population growth rates, predators have often been perceived to suffer higher risks of extinction than other trophic groups. Our study challenges this extinction-risk paradigm by quantitatively comparing patterns of extinction risk across different trophic groups of mammals, birds, and reptiles. We found that trophic level and body size were significant factors that influenced extinction risk in all taxa. At multiple spatial and temporal scales, herbivores, especially herbivorous reptiles and large-bodied herbivores, consistently have the highest proportions of threatened species. This observed elevated extinction risk for herbivores is ecologically consequential, given the important roles that herbivores are known to play in controlling ecosystem function.
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