The commonness of rarity: Global and future distribution of rarity across land plants

Brian Enquist (1, 2) , Xiao Feng (3, 4) , Brad Boyle (2) , Brian Maitner (2) , Erica Newman (2) , Peter Møller Jørgensen (5) , Patrick Roehrdanz (6) , Barbara Thiers (7) , Joseph Burger (4) , Richard Corlett (8) , Thomas Couvreur (9) , Gilles Dauby (10) , John Donoghue (11) , Wendy Foden (12) , Jon Lovett (13, 14) , Pablo A Marquet (15) , Cory Merow (16) , Guy Midgley (17) , Naia Morueta-Holme (18) , Danilo Neves (19) , Ary Oliveira-Filho (19) , Nathan J. B. Kraft (20) , Daniel Park (21) , Robert Peet (22) , Michiel Pillet (2) , Josep Serra-Diaz (23) , Brody Sandel (24) , Mark Schildhauer (25) , Irena Šímová (26, 27) , Cyrille Violle (28) , Jan Wieringa (29) , Susan Wiser (30) , Lee Hannah (6) , Jens-Christian Svenning (31) , Brian Mcgill (32)

1 Santa Fe Institute
2 EEB - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology [Tucson]
3 Chongqing Jiaotong University
4 University of Arizona
5 Missouri Botanical Garden
6 Betty and Gordon Moore Center for Science and Oceans
7 NYBG - New York Botanical Garden
8 Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden
9 UMR DIADE - Diversité, adaptation, développement des plantes
10 UMR AMAP - Botanique et Modélisation de l'Architecture des Plantes et des Végétations
11 Loyola University [Chicago]
12 Tokai University
13 University of Leeds
14 Royal Botanic Gardens [Kew]
15 UC - Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
16 UCONN - University of Connecticut
17 Stellenbosch University
18 UCPH - University of Copenhagen = Københavns Universitet
19 UFMG - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais = Federal University of Minas Gerais [Belo Horizonte, Brazil]
20 UCLA - University of California [Los Angeles]
21 Broad Institute [Cambridge]
22 UNC - University of North Carolina System
23 SILVA - SILVA
24 Santa Clara University
25 NCEAS - National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis
26 UK - Univerzita Karlova [Praha, Česká republika] = Charles University [Prague, Czech Republic]
27 PřF UK - Přírodovědecká fakulta, Univerzita Karlova [Praha, Česká republika] = Faculty of Sciences, Charles University [Prague, Czech Republic]
28 CEFE - Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive
29 Naturalis Biodiversity Center [Leiden]
30 Manaaki Whenua – Landcare Research [Lincoln]
31 Aarhus University [Aarhus]
32 University of Maine

A key feature of life’s diversity is that some species are common but many more are rare. Nonetheless, at global scales, we do not know what fraction of biodiversity consists of rare species. Here, we present the largest compilation of global plant diversity to quantify the fraction of Earth’s plant biodiversity that are rare. A large fraction, ~36.5% of Earth’s ~435,000 plant species, are exceedingly rare. Sampling biases and prominent models, such as neutral theory and the k-niche model, cannot account for the observed prevalence of rarity. Our results indicate that (i) climatically more stable regions have harbored rare species and hence a large fraction of Earth’s plant species via reduced extinction risk but that (ii) climate change and human land use are now disproportionately impacting rare species. Estimates of global species abundance distributions have important implications for risk assessments and conservation planning in this era of rapid global change.

Domaines: Biodiversité et Ecologie

Brian Enquist, Xiao Feng, Brad Boyle, Brian Maitner, Erica Newman, et al.. The commonness of rarity: Global and future distribution of rarity across land plants. Science Advances , 2019, 5 (11), pp.eaaz0414. ⟨10.1126/sciadv.aaz0414⟩. ⟨hal-02411666⟩