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Extinction rate of discovered and undiscovered plants in Singapore
Author(s) -
Kristensen Nadiah P.,
Seah Wei Wei,
Chong Kwek Yan,
Yeoh Yi Shuen,
Fung Tak,
Berman Laura M.,
Tan Hui Zhen,
Chisholm Ryan A.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
conservation biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.2
H-Index - 222
eISSN - 1523-1739
pISSN - 0888-8892
DOI - 10.1111/cobi.13499
Subject(s) - extinction (optical mineralogy) , biodiversity , herbarium , extant taxon , geography , range (aeronautics) , global biodiversity , extinction event , ecology , extinction debt , biology , habitat destruction , paleontology , demography , evolutionary biology , biological dispersal , population , materials science , sociology , composite material
Extinction is a key issue in the assessment of global biodiversity. However, many extinction rate measures do not account for species that went extinct before they could be discovered. The highly developed island city–state of Singapore has one of the best‐documented tropical floras in the world. This allowed us to estimate the total rate of floristic extinctions in Singapore since 1822 after accounting for sampling effort and crypto extinctions by collating herbaria records. Our database comprised 34,224 specimens from 2076 native species, of which 464 species (22%) were considered nationally extinct. We assumed that undiscovered species had the same annual per‐species extinction rates as discovered species and that no undiscovered species remained extant. With classical and Bayesian algorithms, we estimated that 304 (95% confidence interval, 213–414) and 412 (95% credible interval, 313–534) additional species went extinct before they could be discovered, respectively; corresponding total extinction rate estimates were 32% and 35% (range 30–38%). We detected violations of our 2 assumptions that could cause our extinction estimates, particularly the absolute numbers, to be biased downward. Thus, our estimates should be treated as lower bounds. Our results illustrate the possible magnitudes of plant extirpations that can be expected in the tropics as development continues.