Global distribution and conservation of rare and threatened vertebrates

摘要: 'Silver bullet' conservation strategies assume that the distribution of extinction-prone species in one well studied taxonomic group will predict comparable other groups. This has been hard to test, but availability new databases on global birds, mammals and amphibians means a test is now possible. The three groups show similar patterns terms overall richness, threatened rare different each group. Silver bullet alone, it seems, miss target. Instead, priority areas for biodiversity must be based high-resolution data from multiple taxa. 'Silver-bullet' approaches strategy can or two known groups, as there high cross-taxon congruence large-scale biodiversity. Although found Global commonly congruent geographical diversity, therefore act surrogate vulnerable when decisions are being made1,2,3,4. validity these assumptions remains unclear, however, because previous tests have limited both extent5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12. Here we use database 19,349 living bird, mammal amphibian that, although richness very among markedly lower. Congruence especially low rarest species. Cross-taxon also highly scale dependent, particularly at finer spatial resolutions relevant real protected areas. ‘Hotspots’ rarity threat largely non-overlapping across chosen maximize complementarity. Overall, our results indicate ‘silver-bullet’ alone not deliver efficient solutions.