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Reply to: Regional records improve data quality in determining plant extinction rates

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 4, pages 515–516 (2020)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 09 March 2020

replying to W. M. Knapp et al. Nature Ecology & Evolution https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1146-1 (2020)

In our recent review of modern extinction of seed plants1, we found that fewer than half of the extinction declarations we analysed had stood the test of time. Quantification of known uncertainties is common in most scientific analyses, but not with extinction data. Although information on ongoing extinction is likely to change over time, extinction declarations have not yet been associated with a widely accepted metric that conveys how much confidence we can have in them at any one time (but see ref. 2).

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology, Environment and Plant Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Aelys M. Humphreys

  2. Comparative Plant and Fungal Biology, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, UK

    Maria S. Vorontsova

  3. Biodiversity Informatics and Spatial Analysis, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, UK

    Rafaël Govaerts

  4. Conservation Science, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, UK

    Eimear Nic Lughadha

Authors
  1. Aelys M. Humphreys
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  2. Maria S. Vorontsova
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  3. Rafaël Govaerts
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  4. Eimear Nic Lughadha
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Contributions

A.M.H. and E.N.L. wrote the paper with contributions from M.S.V. and R.G. All authors approved the final version.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Aelys M. Humphreys or Rafaël Govaerts.

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Humphreys, A.M., Vorontsova, M.S., Govaerts, R. et al. Reply to: Regional records improve data quality in determining plant extinction rates. Nat Ecol Evol 4, 515–516 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-020-1147-0

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