Hudson, Lawrence N. and Newbold, Tim and Contu, Sara and Hill, Samantha L. L. and Lysenko, Igor and Palma, Adriana De and Phillips, Helen R. P. and Senior, Rebecca A. and Bennett, Dominic J. and Booth, Hollie and Choimes, Argyrios and Correia, David L. P. and Day, Julie and Echeverría-Londoño, Susy and Harrison, Michelle L. K. and Ingram, Daniel J. and Jung, Martin and Kemp, Victoria and Kirkpatrick, lucinda and Martin, Callum D. and Pan, Yuan and White, Hannah J. and Aben, Job and Abrahamczyk, Stefan and Adum, Gilbert B. and Aguilar-Barquero, Virginia and Ancrenaz, Marc and Arbeláez-Cortés, Enrique and Armbrecht, Inge and Azhar, Badrul and Azpiroz, Adrián B. and Baeten, Lander and Báldi, András and Banks, John E. and Barlow, Jos and Batáry, Péter and Bates, Adam J. and Bayne, Erin M. and Beja, Pedro and Slade, Eleanor M. (2014) The PREDICTS database : a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts. Ecology and Evolution, 4 (24). pp. 4701-4735. ISSN 2045-7758
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Abstract
Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species’ threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project – and avert – future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups – including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems – www.predicts.org.uk). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015.