Climate change driven alterations in the extent and intensity of extreme weather events may have catastrophic consequences on primate populations. Using a traitbased approach, we assessed the vulnerability of the world's 607 primate taxa to impacts of cyclones and droughts-two types of extreme climatic events that are expected to increase and/or intensify in the coming decades. We identified 16% of primate taxa that are vulnerable to cyclones particularly those in Madagascar; 22% of primate taxa were vulnerable to droughts which are mainly found in Malaysia Peninsula, North Borneo, Sumatra, and tropical moist forests of West Africa. These findings will help facilitate the prioritization of primate conservation efforts and call for increased efforts to investigate the context-specific mechanisms underpinning primates' vulnerability to extreme climatic events.
Biological invasion is one of the most threatening factors for biodiversity conservation. Lacking information on alien species in certain regions of the world hampers a balanced understanding of invasion processes and efficient data exchange among stakeholders. Current knowledge gaps are in need of urgent concern. We therefore conducted a review on alien animals in Xinjiang, an unknown region of invasion ecology. Xinjiang lies in the heartland of the Asian continent, covering an area of 1,664,900 km2. In the past 64 years, 128 alien animal species were recorded in this region, 39% of which became invasive and led to loss of native biodiversity. Most of these species were introduced through diversification of local agriculture and aquaculture. This process was aggravated by improving transportation and flourishing trade. Multiple linear regression models and correlation analysis were run for explaining influence of environmental and anthropogenic factors on status of alien animals: economically developed areas with abundant water resource, oases in particular, were prone to be hotspots of alien animal species in this arid and semi-arid region. This study also revealed that taxonomically biased and lagged research were critical problems that impeded studies on biological invasions in Xinjiang, and proposed feasible solutions.
Ongoing perturbations in the global climate have triggered changes in the frequency or magnitude of extreme climatic events, including drought. Increasingly common or intense droughts have threatened ungulates. Intensifying trend of drought has been observed in China since the 1980s. We assessed drought vulnerability of 60 ungulate taxa distributed in China by synthesizing information on drought exposure and intrinsic vulnerability related to biological traits. In total, 27 taxa were identified as vulnerable to drought, which represent over half of the taxa assessed as threatened in the IUCN Red List and China's National Red List. We identified hotspots where a high number of drought‐vulnerable taxa are concentrated, including Northeast Himalayan subalpine conifer forests, alpine conifer and mixed forests of Nujiang‐Lancang Gorge, and Qionglai‐Minshan conifer forests, which are all located in Southwest China. We also assessed conservation efforts that China has allocated to ungulate taxa vulnerable to drought. Drought‐vulnerable taxa that are endemic to China have significantly lower coverage in China's National Nature Reserve system compared with nonvulnerable taxa. These findings reveal the gaps in existing conservation efforts and indicate possible improvements that might be needed to maintain species resistance in the face of increasing and intensifying drought impacts.
In the version of this Article originally published, the authors used the 'terrestrial mammal spatial dataset' from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species to extract the Red List Category of primate species and subspecies provided in the shapefile of each primate taxa. However, the Red List Category of 87 primate subspecies in the dataset is inaccurate, as it gives each subspecies the Red List Category assigned to the 'species' they belong to, not the 'subspecies'. Comparing the Red List Category of each primate taxa and their category provided in the attribute table of primate taxa within the mammal spatial dataset that the authors used, they identified that 56 of the 87 primate-subspecies have a higher Red List Category, and 31 have a lower Red List Category, compared with those assigned at the species level. To reflect this, in the sentence "We identified 89 threatened taxa that were vulnerable to cyclone impacts, 72 of which are distributed in Madagascar; 89 threatened taxa that were vulnerable to drought impacts are distributed in lowland moist forests of Sierra Leone and Liberia in mainland Africa, and in Sumatra and Borneo in Southeast Asia", '89' , '72' and '89' have been corrected to '88' , '71' and '101' , respectively. In the sentence "Over 90% of the taxa vulnerable to cyclone impacts and 65% of the taxa vulnerable to drought impacts are threatened with extinction, among which 23 and 26 taxa are 'critically endangered' (Red List category), respectively", 'Over' has been changed to 'Nearly' and '65%' , '23' and '26' have been corrected to '75%' , '22' and '20' , respectively. Figure 2 and Supplementary Dataset 2 have also been corrected to reflect these changes.
Changing drought regimes is a rising threat to biodiversity, but
reported drought impacts on species varied greatly. Acknowledging the
factors associating with these impacts will bring novel understandings
to species vulnerability to the changes of extreme climatic events, and
facilitate effective mitigation of climate change risks. By compiling
the responses of 172 bird species to droughts from global publications,
we found bird abundance generally declined for severe droughts lasting
over a year. Drought-induced declines in abundance were identified for
species feeding on invertebrates, fruits or nectar. Species of a smaller
range showed lower reproductive performance during or after droughts. In
addition to these factors, a small clutch size also contributed to the
reductions in bird abundance or reproductive performance under severe
droughts. In the regions where the duration and/or intensity of severe
droughts increase, bird species with above susceptible traits would
confront greater risks to survival.
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