Alien versus native species as drivers of recent extinctions
Résumé
Native plants and animals can rapidly become superabundant and dominate ecosystems, leading some people to claim that native species are no less likely than alien species to cause environmental damage such as biodiversity loss. We compared how frequently alien species and native species have been implicated as drivers of recent extinctions in a comprehensive global database, the 2017 IUCN Red List. Alien species were considered to be a contributing cause of 25% of plant extinctions and 33% of animal extinctions, whereas native species were implicated in less than 3% and 5% of animal and plant extinctions, respectively. When listed as a putative driver of recent extinctions, native species were more often associated with cooccurring drivers than were alien species. Our results add a new line of evidence that the biogeographic origin (evolutionary history) of a species is a determining factor of its potential to cause disruptive environmental impacts.
Domaines
Sciences de l'environnement
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