Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Matters Arising
  • Published:

Do not downplay biodiversity loss

Subjects

Matters Arising to this article was published on 26 January 2022

The Original Article was published on 18 November 2020

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: The methodology adopted by Leung et al.1 would not detect global climate change.

Data availability

Data used to produce Fig. 1 are freely available from https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/.

References

  1. Leung, B. et al. Clustered versus catastrophic global vertebrate declines. Nature 588, 267–271 (2020).

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  2. McRae, L., Deinet, S. & Freeman, R. The diversity-weighted Living Planet Index: controlling for taxonomic bias in a global biodiversity indicator. PLoS ONE 12, e0169156 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Koricheva, J. & Gurevitch, J. Uses and misuses of meta-analysis in plant ecology. J. Ecol. 102, 828–844 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Cardinale, B. J., Gonzalez, A., Allington, G. R. H. & Loreau, M. Is local biodiversity in decline or not? A summary of the debate over analysis of species richness time trends. Biol. Conserv. 219, 175–183 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Inger, R. et al. Common European birds are declining rapidly while less abundant species’ numbers are rising. Ecol. Lett. 18, 28–36 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Rosenberg, K. V. et al. Decline of the North American avifauna. Science 366, 120–124 (2019).

    Article  CAS  ADS  Google Scholar 

  7. Gonzalez, A. et al. Estimating local biodiversity change: a critique of papers claiming no net loss of local diversity. Ecology 97, 1949–1960 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Scholes, R. J. et al. Toward a global biodiversity observing system. Science 321, 1044–1045 (2008).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

M.L. and C.d.M. acknowledge support from the TULIP Laboratory of Excellence (ANR-10-LABX-41).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

M.L. designed the work and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. C.d.M. analysed the climate change data. All authors contributed to idea development and manuscript revisions.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michel Loreau.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Loreau, M., Cardinale, B.J., Isbell, F. et al. Do not downplay biodiversity loss. Nature 601, E27–E28 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04179-7

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-04179-7

Comments

By submitting a comment you agree to abide by our Terms and Community Guidelines. If you find something abusive or that does not comply with our terms or guidelines please flag it as inappropriate.

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing