Biología de la conservación

Amenazas de la Biodiversidad:
Extinción

Björn Reu
Escuela de Biología
Universidad Industrial de Santander
segundo semestre de 2023
 Extinction

What is extinction?

When is a species extinct?

Where is a species extinct?

 What is extinction?
• A species is extinct when no member of the species remain alive anywhere in
the world (i.e. end of a species with the death of its last individual)
• If an individual of a species remain alive only in captivity or in other human
controlled situations, the species is said to be extinct in the wild
• A species that no longer lives anywhere in the world is considered to be
globally extinct
• A species is locally extinct or extirpated when it is no longer found in an area it
once inhabited, but still found elsewhere in the wild
 IUCN categories of conservation status
717 animal and 87 plant species extinct (IUCN)
37 animal and 28 plant species extinct in the wild

Primack (2012)
http://www.iucnredlist.org/
 Book recommendation
Journey by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine
to see the last individuals of nearly extinct species
• The Aye-aye (Madagascar)
• The Komodo dragon (island of
Komodo in Indonesia)
• The Kakapo (New Zealand)
• The Mountain Gorilla (Zaire)
• The Northern white rhinoceros (Zaire)
• The Yangtze River Dolphin (China)
• The Rodrigues fruit bat (island of
Rodrigues, Mauritius)
• The Amazonian manatee (Brazil)
• The Juan Fernández fur seal (Juan Search for: Douglas Adams
Fernández Islands, Chile) Last Chance To See on YouTube
 Rates of extinction
• species richness has steadily increased over Earth history

• Mass extinction =
loss of over 75% of
estimated species
in a relatively short
time period (~2
million years)
• normally balanced
by speciation
(which takes several
hundreds of years)
 Rates of extinction
• extinction is a natural process (background extinction rates)
% species Duration
lost
?

76% 1 Y - 2.5 MY

80% 0.6 - 8.3 MY

96% 0.16 - 2.8 MY

75% 2 - 29 MY

86% 1.9 - 3.3 MY

Primack (2012), Kareiva (2017)

The ‘Big five’ mass extinction events

Barnosky et al. 2011, Nature

 Natural factors causing extinction
• of the four billion species estimated to have evolved on the Earth over the last
3.5 billion years, some 99% are gone
• Volcanic eruptions
• Asteroid collisions
causing abrupt climatic changes

Example: Yucatan impact causing

dinosaur extinction in the Cretaceous
65 mil years ago, biodiversity to
recover took ~65 mil years
An illustration of the Chicxulub impact crater in the
Yucatán Peninsula
 Extinctions due to the dominance of the Homo sapiens
Example: Pleistocene mega-fauna extinction
• biodiversity decline due to humans over the last 30.000 years
• after human arrival ~ 80% of the megafauna (mammals > 44kg weight) disappeared from
Australia, North and South America, probably caused by hunting, burning, clearing forests
(i.e.habitat destruction)

• In North-America 20.000
years ago 34 genera of
mammals disappeared,
including 10 species heavier
than 1000 kg
Johnson (2009), Gill et al.
(2009), Science
Extinctions due to the dominance of the Homo sapiens
Example: Pleistocene mega-fauna extinction

• Sporormiella is a fungus that makes it spores in

dung of big mammals (more dung more spores)
• paleo-record of Sporormiella indicated
magefaunal decline began 14.800 years ago and
lasted more than 1000 years
• this was long before the Clovis civilisation
• caused (not was a result) of ecological changes
like no-analog vegetation and increased fires

Johnson (2009), Gill et al. (2009), Science

 Tasa de extinción
Anthropogenic Current Natural extinctions
extinctions = extinctions + 1 - 2 E/MSY

=
Background
E/MSY: Extinctions / Million Species years extinctions

E/MSY significa que hay aproximadamente una extinción por cada millón de años de especies.
Desde un punto de vista puramente matemático, esto significa que si hay un millón de especies
en el planeta Tierra, una se extinguiría cada año, mientras que si sólo hubiera una especie, se
extinguiría en un millón de años, etc.
Barnosky et al. 2011, Nature
Barnosky et al. 2011, Nature
 Extinction is forever
The dodo (Raphus cucullatus) is an extinct flightless bird that was endemic to the island
of Mauritius. As it was flightless and terrestrial and there were no mammalian predators
or other natural enemy on Mauritius, the dodo probably nested on the ground

• first recorded in 1598 by dutch

sailors
• hunted by sailors for food
• and invasive species (rats)
• last sighted in 1662
• extinction in less than a century
• icone of human induced species
extinction
 Passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius)
• one flock in 1866 in southern Ontario was
described as being 1.5 km wide and 500 km
long, took 14 hours to pass, and held in excess
of 3.5 billion birds (almost the entire population
at that time)

• catastrophic decline
between 1870 -1890
last individual died
on September 1914,
at the Cincinnati Zoo
 Which species are especially
vulnerable to become extinct?
Endangered species: vulnerable to extinction
Potentially endangered species are:

Direct links
• species with a narrow geographical range
• species with only one or a few populations
• species with small population size
• species which population size is declining
• species that are hunted, harvested or used by people
Endangered species: vulnerable to extinction
Potentially endangered species are:

Indirect links
• species that need large home ranges
• animals with large body size
• species that are not effective dispersers / or need lot of time reaching fecundity
• seasonal migrants
• species with special niche requirements (e.g. co-evolution)
• species living in stable / pristine environments (old growth forest)
• species with little genetic variability
• species that have had no prior contact with people
 Where can we find the
highest extinction rates?
 Islands

Mauritius: > 100 plant and animal species have become extinct
Where can we find the highest extinction rates?

On Islands

Why?
• small populations
• endemic, specialized species
• lack of predators (isolation)
• lack of diseases and humans
 Example: Flora and Fauna of New Zealand
• geographic isolation for 80 million years (Gondwana)
• island biogeography -> unique flora and fauna.
• about 82 percent of New Zealand's indigenous vascular plants are endemic
• before human arrival: 80 % forest cover
• after the polynesian came the english
• since European settlement in 1840:
47 bird species extinct
3 reptile species
1 bat species
4 amphibians
1 fish species
1 insect species
6 molluscs species
and on “Sky islands” (isolated mountains)
e.g. Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
How does extinction work?
It is a problem especially for small populations
It is a problem especially for small populations
The down-ward spiral to extinction
The problem of small, fragmented and isolated
populations:

Small populations are more likely to go extinct than large population

• because of loss in genetic diversity

• because of demographic fluctuations (birth and death rates)
• because of environmental fluctuations and habitat fragmentation
• natural catastrophes, habitat degradation and invasive species
The problem of small, fragmented and
isolated populations:

Frankham et al. 2002