Smits Peter D
Committee on Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2015 Oct 20;112(42):13015-20. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1510482112. Epub 2015 Oct 5.
Determining which biological traits influence differences in extinction risk is vital for understanding the differential diversification of life and for making predictions about species' vulnerability to anthropogenic impacts. Here I present a hierarchical Bayesian survival model of North American Cenozoic mammal species durations in relation to species-level ecological factors, time of origination, and phylogenetic relationships. I find support for the survival of the unspecialized as a time-invariant generalization of trait-based extinction risk. Furthermore, I find that phylogenetic and temporal effects are both substantial factors associated with differences in species durations. Finally, I find that the estimated effects of these factors are partially incongruous with how these factors are correlated with extinction risk of the extant species. These findings parallel previous observations that background extinction is a poor predictor of mass extinction events and suggest that attention should be focused on mass extinctions to gain insight into modern species loss.
确定哪些生物学特征影响灭绝风险的差异，对于理解生命的差异多样化以及预测物种对人为影响的脆弱性至关重要。在此，我提出了一个关于北美新生代哺乳动物物种持续时间的分层贝叶斯生存模型，该模型与物种水平的生态因素、起源时间和系统发育关系相关。我发现支持非特化物种的生存是基于特征的灭绝风险的一个时间不变的概括。此外，我发现系统发育和时间效应都是与物种持续时间差异相关的重要因素。最后，我发现这些因素的估计效应与这些因素与现存物种灭绝风险的相关性部分不一致。这些发现与之前的观察结果一致，即背景灭绝是大规模灭绝事件的一个糟糕预测指标，并表明应该关注大规模灭绝以深入了解现代物种的丧失。
