Global wildlife trade across the tree of life

Scheffers, Brett R.; Oliveira, Brunno F.; Lamb, Ieuan; Edwards, David P.

doi:10.1126/science.aav5327

Cited by 269 publications

(300 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Predicting the outcome of coinfections is especially important given the ongoing extent of Bd-associated biodiversity loss, high susceptibility of numerous salamander species to Bsal, known Bsal-Bd coinfection in the wild, ongoing global trade, and biosecurity measures that are unlikely to curb future Bsal expansion (Martel et al, 2014;Nguyen et al, 2017;Lötters et al, 2018;Scheele et al, 2019;Scheffers, Oliveira, Lamb, & Edwards, 2019;Spitzen-van der Sluijs et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incapacitating effects of fungal coinfection in a novel pathogen system

et al. 2020

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As globalization lowers geographic barriers to movement, coinfection with novel and enzootic pathogens is increasingly likely. Novel and enzootic pathogens can interact synergistically or antagonistically, leading to increased or decreased disease severity. Here we examine host immune responses to coinfection with two closely related fungal pathogens: Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal). Both pathogens have had detrimental effects on amphibian populations, with Bd now largely enzootic, while Bsal is currently spreading and causing epizootics. Recent experimental work revealed that newts coinfected with Bd and Bsal had significantly higher mortality than those infected with either pathogen alone. Here we characterize host immunogenomic responses to chytrid coinfection relative to single infection. Across several classes of immune genes including pattern recognition receptors, cytokines, and MHC, coinfected host gene expression was weakly upregulated or comparable to that seen in single Bd infection, but significantly decreased when compared to Bsal infection. Combined with strong complement pathway downregulation and keratin upregulation, these results indicate that coinfection with Bd and Bsal compromises immune responses active against Bsal alone. As Bsal continues to invade naïve habitats where Bd is enzootic, coinfection will be increasingly common. If other Bd‐susceptible species in the region have similar responses, interactions between the two pathogens could cause severe population and community‐level declines.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Incapacitating effects of fungal coinfection in a novel pathogen system

et al. 2020

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“…Today, in a world approaching 8 billion people, harvesting of wild species continues unsustainably, particularly in the developing world (Butchart et al, ; Estrada et al, ; Mccauley et al, ; Ripple et al, ). Hunting of large and charismatic animals has garnered the most attention, and such creatures are now widely protected since their populations are dangerously low; however, the global wildlife trade continues to grow in order to meet demands for meat, medicines, ivory, claws, feathers, horns, and pets (Estrada et al, ; Ripple et al, ; Scheffers, Oliveira, Lamb, & Edwards, ). As a consequence, many animal populations have been reduced to such low values, and exist in degraded, highly fragmented habitats, that the extinction debt is high (Bauer et al, ; Ripple et al, ; Scheffers et al, ).…”

Section: Global Change Driversmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global change biology: A primer

Sage

2019

Global Change Biology

192

109

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Because of human action, the Earth has entered an era where profound changes in the global environment are creating novel conditions that will be discernable far into the future. One consequence may be a large reduction of the Earth's biodiversity, potentially representing a sixth mass extinction. With effective stewardship, the global change drivers that threaten the Earth's biota could be alleviated, but this requires clear understanding of the drivers, their interactions, and how they impact ecological communities. This review identifies 10 anthropogenic global change drivers and discusses how six of the drivers (atmospheric CO2 enrichment, climate change, land transformation, species exploitation, exotic species invasions, eutrophication) impact Earth's biodiversity. Driver impacts on a particular species could be positive or negative. In either case, they initiate secondary responses that cascade along ecological lines of connection and in doing so magnify the initial impact. The unique nature of the threat to the Earth's biodiversity is not simply due to the magnitude of each driver, but due to the speed of change, the novelty of the drivers, and their interactions. Emphasizing one driver, notably climate change, is problematic because the other global change drivers also degrade biodiversity and together threaten the stability of the biosphere. As the main academic journal addressing global change effects on living systems, GCB is well positioned to provide leadership in solving the global change challenge. If humanity cannot meet the challenge, then GCB is positioned to serve as a leading chronicle of the sixth mass extinction to occur on planet Earth.

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“…To explore how species awareness varied with pollination contribution, we built a list of animal pollinators with an approach combining text-analysis and manual inspection of the pollination literature (see Supplementary Information for a detailed methodology). We also used the list of traded vertebrate species released in Scheffers et al (2019) and FAO fisheries statistics (FAO, 2020) to compile a dataset of traded mammals, birds, squamate reptiles, and harvested ray-finned fish. We then retrieved the Wikidata ID for each of these traded species using the Wikipedia API, which we merged onto each species page.…”

Section: Pollinator and Wildlife Trade Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Species Awareness Index (SAI): a Wikipedia-derived conservation culturomics metric for public biodiversity awareness

Millard

Gregory

Jones

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Threats to global biodiversity are well-known, but slowing currents rates of biodiversity loss remains an ongoing challenge. The Aichi Targets set out 20 goals on which the international community should act to alleviate biodiversity decline, one of which (Target 1) aimed to raise public awareness of the importance of biodiversity. Whilst conventional indicators for Target 1 are of low spatial and temporal coverage, conservation culturomics has demonstrated how biodiversity awareness can be quantified at the global scale. Following the Living Planet Index methodology, here we introduced the Species Awareness Index (SAI), an index of changing species awareness on Wikipedia. We calculated this index at the page level for 41,197 IUCN species across 10 Wikipedia languages, incorporating over 2 billion views. Bootstrapped indices for the page level SAI show that overall awareness of biodiversity is marginally increasing, although there are differences among taxonomic classes and languages. Among taxonomic classes, overall awareness of reptiles is increasing fastest, and amphibians slowest. Among languages, overall species awareness for the Japanese Wikipedias is increasing fastest, and the Chinese and German Wikipedias slowest. Although awareness of species on Wikipedia as a whole is increasing, and is significantly higher in traded species, over the period 2016-2020 change in interest appears not to be strongly related to the trade of species or animal pollinators. As a data source for public biodiversity awareness Wikipedia could be integrated into the Biodiversity Engagement Indicator, thereby incorporating a more direct link to biodiversity itself.

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Global wildlife trade across the tree of life

Cited by 269 publications

References 53 publications

Incapacitating effects of fungal coinfection in a novel pathogen system

Incapacitating effects of fungal coinfection in a novel pathogen system

Global change biology: A primer

The Species Awareness Index (SAI): a Wikipedia-derived conservation culturomics metric for public biodiversity awareness

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