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Shortfalls and opportunities in terrestrial vertebrate species discovery

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 5, pages 631–639 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Much of biodiversity remains undiscovered, causing species and their functions to remain unrealized and potentially lost in ignorance. Here we use extensive species-level data in a time-to-event model framework to identify taxonomic and geographic discovery gaps in terrestrial vertebrates. Biological, environmental and sociological factors all affect discovery probability and together provide strong predictive ability for species discovery. Our model identifies distinct taxonomic and geographic unevenness in future discovery potential, with greatest opportunities for amphibians and reptiles, and for Neotropical and Indo-Malayan forests. Brazil, Indonesia, Madagascar and Colombia emerge as holding greatest discovery opportunities, with a quarter of potential discoveries estimated. These findings highlight the importance of international policy support for basic taxonomic research and the potential of quantitative models to aid species discovery.

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Fig. 1: Variation in observed and predicted discovery trends for the years 1759–2014 across the four terrestrial vertebrate groups.
Fig. 2: Joint effects of species-level attributes on discovery probability over different time periods.
Fig. 3: Predicted future discovery potential across major terrestrial vertebrate taxa.
Fig. 4: Global variation in predicted discovery potential, quantified as the percent of all global terrestrial vertebrate discoveries predicted to occur in a region.

Data availability

Data produced for this study are available as Supplementary Data files. Raw data to reproduce the analysis of this study are available at vertlife.org/data/discoverypotential.

Code availability

R scripts to reproduce the analysis of this study are available at vertlife.org/data/discoverypotential.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to S. Meiri, D. S. Rinnan, G. Reygondeau, N. Upham, M. Costello, D. Wake and J. Hortal for providing helpful comments on the research or manuscript drafts. We thank C. Haddad, L. C. Márquez, G. Singh and A. F. Meyer for providing pictures of the example species in Fig. 1. This work was produced, in part, with the support of the National Geographic Society through a partnership with the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation and its Half-Earth Project. W. J. also acknowledges support from NSF grant DEB-1441737 and NASA grants 80NSSC17K0282 and 80NSSC18K0435.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Mario R. Moura & Walter Jetz

  2. Center for Biodiversity and Global Change, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Mario R. Moura & Walter Jetz

  3. Department of Biological Sciences, Federal University of Paraíba, Areia, Brazil

    Mario R. Moura

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Contributions

M.R.M. and W.J. conceived the study, developed the figures and wrote the text; M.R.M. analysed the data.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Mario R. Moura or Walter Jetz.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Peer review information Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks Joaquin Hortal, Stewart Edie and Lucas N. Joppa for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Peer reviewer reports are available.

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

Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Top 30 tetrapod families with highest percentage of total future species discoveries.

a, Amphibians. b, Reptiles. c, Mammals. d, Birds. The horizontal lines denote the 95% confidence intervals. Taxon-level estimates are available through Supplementary Data 1.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Top 30 tetrapod families with highest standardized proportion of unknown species.

a, Amphibians. b, Reptiles. c, Mammals. d, Birds. The horizontal lines denote the 95% confidence intervals. Taxon-level estimates are available through Supplementary Data 1.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Geographical discovery patterns for terrestrial vertebrates at different spatial resolutions.

a–c, Percent of total predicted discoveries across grid cells and their respective (d–f) uncertainty (± margin of error). g–i, Standardized proportion of undiscovered species across grid cells and their respective (j–l) uncertainty (± margin of error). Outlined and hatched regions designate grid cells holding values within respectively the top 10% and top 5% of the mapped metric. Maps drawn at spatial resolutions of 220, 440, 880 km. Assemblage-level estimates are available through Supplementary Data 2.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Geographical discovery patterns for amphibians at different spatial resolutions.

a–c, Percent of total discoveries across grid cells and their respective (d–f) uncertainty (± margin of error). g–i, Standardized proportion of undiscovered species across grid cells and their respective (j–l) uncertainty (± margin of error). Outlined and hatched regions designate grid cells holding values within respectively the top 10% and top 5% of the mapped metric. Maps drawn at spatial resolutions of 220, 440, 880 km. Assemblage-level estimates are available through Supplementary Data 2.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Geographical discovery patterns for reptiles at different spatial resolutions.

a–c, Percent of total discoveries across grid cells and their respective (d-f) uncertainty (± margin of error). (g–i) Standardized proportion of undiscovered species across grid cells and their respective (j–l) uncertainty (± margin of error). Outlined and hatched regions designate grid cells holding values within respectively the top 10% and top 5% of the mapped metric. Maps drawn at spatial resolutions of 220, 440, 880 km. Assemblage-level estimates are available through Supplementary Data 2.

Extended Data Fig. 6 Geographical discovery patterns for mammals at different spatial resolutions.

a–c, Percent of total discoveries across grid cells and their respective (d-f) uncertainty (± margin of error). g–i, Standardized proportion of undiscovered species across grid cells and their respective (j–l) uncertainty (± margin of error). Outlined and hatched regions designate grid cells holding values within respectively the top 10% and top 5% of the mapped metric. Maps drawn at spatial resolutions of 220, 440, 880 km. Assemblage-level estimates are available through Supplementary Data 2.

Extended Data Fig. 7 Geographical discovery patterns for birds at different spatial resolutions.

a–c, Percent of total discoveries across grid cells and their respective (d-f) uncertainty (± margin of error). g–i, Standardized proportion of undiscovered species across grid cells and their respective (j–l) uncertainty (± margin of error). Outlined and hatched regions designate grid cells holding values within respectively the top 10% and top 5% of the mapped metric. Maps drawn at spatial resolutions of 220, 440, 880 km. Assemblage-level estimates are available through Supplementary Data 2.

Extended Data Fig. 8 Biogeographical realms and biomes with higher percent of total future discoveries.

Biogeographic- and Biome-wide percent of total discoveries extracted from assemblages defined at (a) 220 km, (b) 440 km, and (c) 880 km of spatial resolution. Bioregion-level estimates are available through Supplementary Data 3.

Extended Data Fig. 9 Top 30 bioregions with higher percent of total future discoveries.

Bioregions-wide percent of total discoveries extracted from assemblages defined at (a) 220 km, (b) 440 km, and (c) 880 km of spatial resolution. A bioregion combines biogeographical realm and biome information. Bioregion-level estimates are available through Supplementary Data 3.

Extended Data Fig. 10 Top 30 countries with higher percent of total discoveries.

Country-wide percent of total discoveries extracted from assemblages defined at (a) 220 km, (b) 440 km, and (c) 880 km of spatial resolution. Country-level estimates are available through Supplementary Data 4.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods, Results, References, Tables 1–4 and Figs. 1–15.

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Peer Review Information

Supplementary Data

Estimates of discovery potential at the levels of taxa, assemblages, bioregions and countries: TaxonLevelEstimates.zip (Supplementary Data 1), AssemblageLevelEstimates.zip (Supplementary Data 2), BioregionLevelEstimates.zip (Supplementary Data 3), CountryLevelEstimates.zip (Supplementary Data 4).

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Moura, M.R., Jetz, W. Shortfalls and opportunities in terrestrial vertebrate species discovery. Nat Ecol Evol 5, 631–639 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01411-5

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