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Contradicting habitat type-extinction risk relationships between living and fossil amphibians
Trait analysis has become a crucial tool for assessing the extinction risk of species. While some extinction risk-trait relationships have been often identical between different living taxa, a temporal comparison of fossil taxa with related current taxa was rarely considered. However, we argue that...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Royal Society Publishing
2017
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5451811/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28573010 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170051 |
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author | Tietje, Melanie Rödel, Mark-Oliver |
author_facet | Tietje, Melanie Rödel, Mark-Oliver |
author_sort | Tietje, Melanie |
collection | PubMed |
description | Trait analysis has become a crucial tool for assessing the extinction risk of species. While some extinction risk-trait relationships have been often identical between different living taxa, a temporal comparison of fossil taxa with related current taxa was rarely considered. However, we argue that it is important to know if extinction risk-trait relations are constant or changing over time. Herein we investigated the influence of habitat type on the persistence length of amphibian species. Living amphibians are regarded as the most threatened group of terrestrial vertebrates and thus of high interest to conservationists. Species from different habitat types show differences in extinction risk, i.e. species depending on flowing waters being more threatened than those breeding in stagnant sites. After assessing the quality of the available amphibian fossil data, we show that today's habitat type-extinction risk relationship is reversed compared to fossil amphibians, former taxa persisting longer when living in rivers and streams, thus suggesting a change of effect direction of this trait. Neither differences between amphibian orders nor environmentally caused preservation effects could explain this pattern. We argue this change to be most likely a result of anthropogenic influence, which turned a once favourable strategy into a disadvantage. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5451811 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2017 |
publisher | The Royal Society Publishing |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-54518112017-06-01 Contradicting habitat type-extinction risk relationships between living and fossil amphibians Tietje, Melanie Rödel, Mark-Oliver R Soc Open Sci Biology (Whole Organism) Trait analysis has become a crucial tool for assessing the extinction risk of species. While some extinction risk-trait relationships have been often identical between different living taxa, a temporal comparison of fossil taxa with related current taxa was rarely considered. However, we argue that it is important to know if extinction risk-trait relations are constant or changing over time. Herein we investigated the influence of habitat type on the persistence length of amphibian species. Living amphibians are regarded as the most threatened group of terrestrial vertebrates and thus of high interest to conservationists. Species from different habitat types show differences in extinction risk, i.e. species depending on flowing waters being more threatened than those breeding in stagnant sites. After assessing the quality of the available amphibian fossil data, we show that today's habitat type-extinction risk relationship is reversed compared to fossil amphibians, former taxa persisting longer when living in rivers and streams, thus suggesting a change of effect direction of this trait. Neither differences between amphibian orders nor environmentally caused preservation effects could explain this pattern. We argue this change to be most likely a result of anthropogenic influence, which turned a once favourable strategy into a disadvantage. The Royal Society Publishing 2017-05-10 /pmc/articles/PMC5451811/ /pubmed/28573010 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170051 Text en © 2017 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Biology (Whole Organism) Tietje, Melanie Rödel, Mark-Oliver Contradicting habitat type-extinction risk relationships between living and fossil amphibians |
title | Contradicting habitat type-extinction risk relationships between living and fossil amphibians |
title_full | Contradicting habitat type-extinction risk relationships between living and fossil amphibians |
title_fullStr | Contradicting habitat type-extinction risk relationships between living and fossil amphibians |
title_full_unstemmed | Contradicting habitat type-extinction risk relationships between living and fossil amphibians |
title_short | Contradicting habitat type-extinction risk relationships between living and fossil amphibians |
title_sort | contradicting habitat type-extinction risk relationships between living and fossil amphibians |
topic | Biology (Whole Organism) |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5451811/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28573010 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170051 |
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