What causes the extinction risks of biodiversity to deteriorate or improve? – a global analysis of birds, mammals, corals or amphibians

What causes the extinction risks of biodiversity to deteriorate or improve? – a global analysis of birds, mammals, corals or amphibians

Advisor/s

Dr Martijn van de Pol

College or Research Centre

College of Science & Engineering

Summary of Project

Humans influence the environment in such a strong way that many species are going extinct, or are in such low numbers that they become endangered. Conservation actions and mitigation of threats help to slow down ongoing increases in extinction risk, and ultimately the aim is to become Nature positive and turn the tide. At the other side of the equation, some changes in the environment (e.g. climate change) are still accelerating and may cause extinction risks to worsen over time. Currently, we have a poor understanding of what are the main determinants of extinction risks in animals.
This project aims to study changes in the threat status of species using the IUCN red list data. The IUCN for each species summarizes all the existing scientific evidence into a red list threat status of whether a species is non-threatened, threatened, extinct in the wild, or various gradual steps in between. The red list is updated every so many years for each species due to new scientific evidence. In this project, we will quantify the rates of changes in red list threat status over time for all the world’s species in a specific group (birds, mammals, corals or amphibians). To understand the causes of these changes, we will next identify which factors (type of species, habitat, type of threats, type and amount of conservation action) can explain why some species improve while other deteriorate. This project will thus help identify the main drivers of ongoing reductions in extinction risks of the world’s animals, as well as the factors that lead to success and contribute to a nature positive world.

Key Words

climate change; population ecology; comparative study; statistics

Would suit an applicant who

has an interest in ecology, global change and conservation or statistics. Affinity with statistics and/or modelling is desirable.

Updated: 06 Nov 2023