Green Plants in the Red: A Baseline Global Assessment for the IUCN Sampled Red List Index for Plants

作者：Neil Alistair Brummitt, Steven P. Bachman, Janine Griffiths‐Lee, Maiko L. Lutz, Justin F. Moat, Aljos Farjon, John Donaldson, Craig Hilton‐Taylor, Thomas R. Meagher, Sara Albuquerque, Elina Aletrari, A. Kei Andrews, Guy Atchison, Elisabeth Baloch, Barbara Barlozzini, Alice Brunazzi, Julia Carretero, Marco Celesti, Helen Chadburn, Eduardo Cianfoni, Chris Cockel, Vanessa L. Coldwell, Benedetta Concetti, Sara Contu, Vicki Crook, Philippa Dyson, Lauren M. Gardiner, Nadia Ghanim, Hannah Greene, Alice E. R. Groom, Ruth Harker, Della Hopkins, Sonia Khela, Poppy Lakeman-Fraser, Heather L. Lindon, Helen Lockwood, Christine T. Loftus, Debora Lombrici, Lucia Lopez-Poveda, James E. Lyon, P. Malcolm, Kirsty F. McGregor, Laura Beatriz Moreno, Linda Murray, Keara Nazar, Emily Power, Mireya Quiton Tuijtelaars, Ruth Salter, Robert Segrott, Hannah Thacker, Leighton J. Thomas, Sarah Tingvoll, Gemma Watkinson, Katerina Wojtaszekova, Eimear Nic Lughadha · 发表于：PLoS ONE · 年份：2015 · DOI：10.1371/journal.pone.0135152 · 被引用次数：374 · 研究领域：Species Distribution and Climate Change、Botany and Geology in Latin America and Caribbean、Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies

Plants provide fundamental support systems for life on Earth and are the basis for all terrestrial ecosystems; a decline in plant diversity will be detrimental to all other groups of organisms including humans. Decline in plant diversity has been hard to quantify, due to the huge numbers of known and yet to be discovered species and the lack of an adequate baseline assessment of extinction risk against which to track changes. The biodiversity of many remote parts of the world remains poorly known, and the rate of new assessments of extinction risk for individual plant species approximates the rate at which new plant species are described. Thus the question 'How threatened are plants?' is still very difficult to answer accurately. While completing assessments for each species of plant remains a distant prospect, by assessing a randomly selected sample of species the Sampled Red List Index for Plants gives, for the first time, an accurate view of how threatened plants are across the world. It represents the first key phase of ongoing efforts to monitor the status of the world's plants. More than 20% of plant species assessed are threatened with extinction, and the habitat with the most threatened species is overwhelmingly tropical rain forest, where the greatest threat to plants is anthropogenic habitat conversion, for arable and livestock agriculture, and harvesting of natural resources. Gymnosperms (e.g. conifers and cycads) are the most threatened group, while a third of pla...