Barlow, Jos and Franca, Filipe and Gardner, Toby A. and Hicks, Christina C. and Lennox, Gareth D. and Berenguer, Erika and Castello, Leandro and Economo, Evan P. and Ferreira, Joice and Guenard, Benoit and Leal, Cecilia Gontijo and Isaac, Victoria and Lees, Alexander C. and Parr, Catherine L. and Wilson, Shaun K. and Young, Paul J. and Graham, Nicholas A. J. (2018) The future of hyperdiverse tropical ecosystems. Nature, 559 (7715). pp. 517-526. ISSN 0028-0836
Abstract
The tropics contain the overwhelming majority of Earth's biodiversity: their terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems hold more than three-quarters of all species, including almost all shallow-water corals and over 90% of terrestrial birds. However, tropical ecosystems are also subject to pervasive and interacting stressors, such as deforestation, overfishing and climate change, and they are set within a socio-economic context that includes growing pressure from an increasingly globalized world, larger and more affluent tropical populations, and weak governance and response capacities. Concerted local, national and international actions are urgently required to prevent a collapse of tropical biodiversity.