Maelys Boennec, Vasilis Dakos, Vincent DevictorPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"
<p>Populations and ecological communities are changing worldwide, and empirical studies exhibit a mixture of either declining or mixed trends. Confusion in global biodiversity trends thus remains while assessing such changes is of major social, political, and scientific importance. Part of this variability may arise from the difficulty to reliably assess global biodiversity trends. Here, we conducted a literature review of studies documenting the temporal dynamics of global biodiversity. We classified the differences among approaches, data and methodology used by the reviewed papers to reveal common findings and sources of discrepancies. We show that reviews and meta-analyses, along with the use of global indicators, are more likely to conclude that trends are declining. On the other hand, the longer the data are available, the more nuanced are the trends they generate. Our results also highlight the lack of studies providing information on the impact of synergistic pressures on a global scale, making it even more difficult to understand the driving factors of the observed changes and how to decide conservation plan accordingly. Finally, we stress the importance of taking into account the sources of confusion identified, as well as the complexity of biodiversity changes, in order to implement effective conservation strategies. In particular, biodiversity dynamics are almost systematically assumed to be linear, while non-linear trends are largely neglected. Clarifying the sources of confusion in global biodiversity trends should strengthen large scale biodiversity monitoring and conservation.</p>
Biodiversity, Crisis, Population time series, Anthropogenic drivers, Climate
Cyrille Violle (cyrille.violle@cefe.cnrs.fr), Manuela Gonzalez-Suarez (manuela.gonzalez@reading.ac.uk), Pol Capdevila (pcapdevila.pc@gmail.com), Ryan Chisholm (chisholm@nus.edu.sg ), Andrew Beckerman (a.beckerman@sheffield.ac.uk), Jean-Baptiste Mihoub (jean-baptiste.mihoub@mnhn.fr), Anne Duplouy suggested: LAura Antao laura.antao@helsinki.fi, Thomas Guillemaud suggested: elodie.vercken@inrae.fr, Andrew Beckerman [a.beckerman@sheffield.ac.uk] suggested: Thomas F Johnson: t.f.johnson@sheffield.ac.uk, Mário Boieiro [mboieiro@fc.ul.pt] suggested: I apologize, but at this stage I cannot provide the review of the manuscript. I suggest to contact the following experts on the subject:, Mário Boieiro [mboieiro@fc.ul.pt] suggested: Paul Ehrlich E-mail: pre@stanford.edu, Mário Boieiro [mboieiro@fc.ul.pt] suggested: Axel Hochkirch E-mail: hochkirch@uni-trier.de , Mário Boieiro [mboieiro@fc.ul.pt] suggested: Pedro Cardoso E-mail: pmcardoso@ciencias.ulisboa.pt
No need for them to be recommenders of PCIEcology. Please do not suggest reviewers for whom there might be a conflict of interest. Reviewers are not allowed to review preprints written by close colleagues (with whom they have published in the last four years, with whom they have received joint funding in the last four years, or with whom they are currently writing a manuscript, or submitting a grant proposal), or by family members, friends, or anyone for whom bias might affect the nature of the review - see the code of conduct
