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The Living Planet Index does not measure abundance

Nature volume 601, pages E14–E15 (2022)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 26 January 2022

The Original Article was published on 18 November 2020

arising from B. Leung et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2920-6 (2020)

The Living Planet Index (LPI), which is said to track changes in vertebrate abundance, has been in strong decline over the past decades1, raising alarm about the state of biodiversity. Leung et al.2 find that the strong declines in the global LPI are due to a small fraction of strongly declining population trends. Although the sensitivity of the LPI to outlier trends is an important finding, the exposition of Leung et al.2 does not make it clear that the LPI does not really measure changes in abundance, and if interpreted as change in abundance, the conclusions are systematically biased downwards. We think that this is an important issue to clarify, given the role of the LPI as an indicator for the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the high media coverage the LPI receives.

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Fig. 1: Numerical examples illustrating the relationship between population trends and percentage change in total abundance, arithmetic average of proportional change, and the LPI.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Mikael Puurtinen, Merja Elo & Janne S. Kotiaho

  2. School of Resource Wisdom, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Mikael Puurtinen, Merja Elo & Janne S. Kotiaho

Authors
  1. Mikael Puurtinen
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  2. Merja Elo
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  3. Janne S. Kotiaho
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M.P. initiated the comment and led the writing process. All authors contributed to the text and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Mikael Puurtinen.

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Puurtinen, M., Elo, M. & Kotiaho, J.S. The Living Planet Index does not measure abundance. Nature 601, E14–E15 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03708-8

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