The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts

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 - http://www.predicts.org.uk). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015.

Keywords: Data sharing; global change; habitat destruction; land use.

Figure 1

Site locations. Colors indicate biomes, taken from The Nature Conservancy's (2009) terrestrial ecoregions of the world dataset, shown in a geographic (WGS84) projection. Circle radii are proportional to log₁₀ of the number of samples at that Site. All circles have the same degree of partial transparency.

Figure 2

Latitudinal coverage. The percentage of Studies (circles), Sites (crosses) and samples (pluses) in five‐degree bands of latitude. We computed each Study's latitude as the median of its Sites’ latitudes. The solid and dashed lines show the percentage of total terrestrial area and percentage of total terrestrial NPP, respectively, in each five‐degree band (see “ Biogeographical coverage ” in Methods). The dotted horizontal lines indicate the extent of the tropics.

Figure 3

Spatiotemporal sampling coverage. Site sampling dates by biome (A) and absolute latitude (B). Each Site is represented by a circle and line. Circle radii are proportional to log₁₀ of the number of samples at that Site. Circle centers are at the midpoints of Site sampling dates; lines indicate the start and end dates of sampling. Y‐values in (A) have been jittered at the study level. Circles and lines have the same degree of partial transparency. Biome colors and letters in (A) are as in Fig. 1. Colors in (B) indicate biogeographic realm.

Figure 4

Coverage of biomes. The percentage of Studies (A and B), Sites (C and D) and samples (E and F) against percentages of terrestrial NPP (A, C and E) and terrestrial area (B, D and F). Biome colors and letters are as in Fig. 1.

Figure 5

Representativeness of predominant land use and land‐use intensity classes. Numbers are the percentage of Sites assigned to each combination of land use and intensity. Numbers in brackets and colors are the differences between these and the proportional estimated total terrestrial area of each combination of land use and land‐use intensity for 2005, computed from the HYDE (Hurtt et al. 2011) and Global Land Systems datasets (van Asselen and Verburg 2012); no difference is shown for “Urban”/”Light use” because these datasets did not allow us to compute an estimate for this combination. The 12.15% of Sites that could not be assigned a classification for predominant land use and/or land‐use intensity are not shown.

Figure 6

Taxonomic coverage. The number of species in our database against the number of described species as estimated by Chapman (2009). Vertebrates are shown in red, arthropods in pink, other animals in gray, plants in green and fungi in blue. The dashed, solid and dotted lines indicate 10, 1 and 0.1% representation, respectively. Groups with just a single species in the database – Diplura, Mycetozoa, Onychophora, Pauropoda, Phasmida, Siphonaptera, Symphyla and Zoraptera – are not shown.

Figure 7

Cumulative percentage of species in the database, by the taxonomic rank at which the name was matched to COL.

Figure 8

Number of Studies by lowest common taxonomic group. Bars show the number of Studies within each lowest common taxon (so, one Study examined the species Swietenia macrophylla, three Studies examined the species Bombus pascuorum, ten Studies examined multiple species within the genus Bombus, and so on). Colors are as in Figure 6. Numbers on the right are the primary references from which data were taken: 1 López‐Quintero et al. ; 2 Buscardo et al. ; 3 Domínguez et al. ; 4 Nöske et al. ; 5 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) ; 6 Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) ; 7 Sheil et al. ; 8 Dumont et al. ; 9 Proenca et al. ; 10 Baeten et al. , ; 11 Richardson et al. ; 12 Schon et al. ; 13 Muchane et al. ; 14 Vázquez and Simberloff ; 15 Bouyer et al. ; 16 O'Connor ; 17 Higuera and Wolf ; 18 Kati et al. ; 19 Lucas‐Borja et al. ; 20 Louhaichi et al. ; 21 Power et al. ; 22 Brearley ; 23 Baeten et al. ; 24 Williams et al. ; 25 Mayfield et al. ; 26 Kolb and Diekmann ; 27 Phalan et al. ; 28 Vassilev et al. ; 29 Paritsis and Aizen ; 30 Boutin et al. ; 31 Baur et al. ; 32 Fensham et al. ; 33 Brunet et al. ; 34 Kessler et al. ; 35 Hylander and Nemomissa ; 36 Barlow et al. ; 37 Kumar and Shahabuddin ; 38 Kessler et al. ; 39 Hietz ; 40 Krauss et al. ; 41 Hernández et al. ; 42 Calviño‐Cancela et al. ; 43 Golodets et al. ; 44 Castro et al. ; 45 Milder et al. ; 46 Helden and Leather ; 47 McNamara et al. ; 48 Katovai et al. ; 49 Berry et al. ; 50 Letcher and Chazdon ; 51 Romero‐Duque et al. ; 52 Marin‐Spiotta et al. ; 53 Power and Stout ; 54 Norfolk et al. ; 55 Poveda et al. ; 56 Cabra‐García et al. ; 57 Turner and Foster ; 58 Woodcock et al. ; 59 Lachat et al. ; 60 Rousseau et al. ; 61 Nakamura et al. ; 62 Basset et al. ; 63 Hanley ; 64 Billeter et al. ; Diekötter et al. ; Le Féon et al. ; 65 Sung et al. ; 66 St‐Laurent et al. ; 67 Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) ; 68 Endo et al. ; 69 Alcala et al. ; 70 Bicknell and Peres ; 71 Woinarski et al. ; 72 Garden et al. ; 73 Hylander and Weibull ; 74 Giordano et al. ; 75 Ström et al. ; 76 Römbke et al. ; 77 Giordani ; 78 Hu and Cao ; 79 Edenius et al. ; 80 O'Dea and Whittaker ; 81 Ims and Henden ; 82 Rosselli ; 83 Arbeláez‐Cortés et al. ; 84 Santana et al. ; 85 Sheldon et al. ; 86 Wang et al. ; 87 Sodhi et al. ; 88 Naoe et al. ; 89 Cerezo et al. ; 90 Lantschner et al. ; 91 Chapman and Reich ; 92 Báldi et al. ; 93 Farwig et al. ; 94 Shahabuddin and Kumar ; 95 Borges ; 96 Wunderle et al. ; 97 Politi et al. ; 98 Moreno‐Mateos et al. ; 99 Mallari et al. ; 100 Latta et al. ; 101 Sosa et al. ; 102 Miranda et al. ; 103 Flaspohler et al. ; 104 Bóçon ; 105 Azpiroz and Blake ; 106 Aben et al. ; 107 Cockle et al. ; 108 Vergara and Simonetti ; 109 Azhar et al. ; 110 Reid et al. ; 111 Neuschulz et al. ; 112 Dawson et al. ; 113 Naidoo ; 114 Dures and Cumming ; 115 Meyer et al. ; 116 Summerville ; 117 Cleary et al. ; 118 Mudri‐Stojnic et al. ; 119 Schüepp et al. ; 120 Bates et al. ; 121 Quintero et al. ; 122 Vergara and Badano ; 123 Kohler et al. ; 124 Meyer et al. , 125 Hoffmann and Zeller ; 126 Caceres et al. ; 127 Lantschner et al. ; 128 Wells et al. ; 129 Bernard et al. ; 130 Martin et al. ; 131 Gheler‐Costa et al. ; 132 Sridhar et al. ; 133 Scott et al. ; 134 Oke ; 135 Oke and Chokor ; 136 Kappes et al. ; 137 Walker et al. ; 138 Lo‐Man‐Hung et al. ; 139 Zaitsev et al. ; 140 Robles et al. ; 141 Brito et al. ; 142 Luja et al. ; 143 Smith‐Pardo and Gonzalez ; 144 Schüepp et al. ; 145 Tylianakis et al. ; 146 Verboven et al. ; 147 Osgathorpe et al. ; 148 Tonietto et al. ; 149 Samnegård et al. ; 150 Cameron et al. ; 151 Malone et al. ; 152 Marshall et al. ; 153 Shuler et al. ; 154 Quaranta et al. ; 155 Légaré et al. ; 156 Noreika ; 157 Otavo et al. ; 158 Numa et al. ; 159 Jonsell ; 160 Mico et al. ; 161 Rodrigues et al. ; 162 Sugiura et al. ; 163 Verdú et al. ; 164 Banks et al. ; 165 Elek and Lovei ; 166 Fukuda et al. ; 167 Castro‐Luna et al. ; 168 Shafie et al. ; 169 Struebig et al. ; 170 Threlfall et al. ; 171 Presley et al. ; 172 Willig et al. ; 173 MacSwiney et al. ; 174 Clarke et al. ; 175 Sedlock et al. ; 176 Verdasca et al. ; 177 D'Aniello et al. ; 178 Berg et al. ; 179 Summerville et al. ; 180 Hawes et al. ; 181 Cleary and Mooers ; 182 Krauss et al. ; 183 Ishitani et al. ; 184 Safian et al. ; 185 Furlani et al. ; 186 Isaacs‐Cubides and Urbina‐Cardona ; 187 Gutierrez‐Lamus ; 188 Adum et al. ; 189 Watling et al. ; 190 Pillsbury and Miller ; 191 Pineda and Halffter ; 192 Ofori‐Boateng et al. ; 193 de Souza et al. ; 194 Faruk et al. ; 195 Hilje and Aide ; 196 Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI) ; 197 Zaitsev et al. ; 198 Arroyo et al. ; 199 Paradis and Work ; 200 Buddle and Shorthouse ; 201 Kapoor ; 202 Alcayaga et al. ; 203 Magura et al. ; 204 Littlewood et al. ; 205 Kőrösi et al. ; 206 Oliveira et al. ; 207 Carrijo et al. ; 208 Reis and Cancello ; 209 Chauvat et al. ; 210 Otto and Roloff ; 211 Zimmerman et al. ; 212 Pelegrin and Bucher ; 213 Savage et al. ; 214 Bragagnolo et al. ; 215 Jung and Powell ; 216 Bartolommei et al. ; 217 Dominguez‐Haydar and Armbrecht ; 218 Armbrecht et al. ; 219 Hashim et al. ; 220 Schmidt et al. ; 221 Maeto and Sato ; 222 Bihn et al. ; 223 Delabie et al. ; 224 Fayle et al. ; 225 Gove et al. ; 226 Buczkowski and Richmond ; 227 Buczkowski ; 228 Noriega et al. ; 229 Navarro et al. ; 230 Noriega et al. ; 231 Horgan ; 232 Gardner et al. ; 233 da Silva ; 234 Silva et al. ; 235 Jacobs et al. ; 236 Slade et al. ; 237 Filgueiras et al. ; 238 Navarrete and Halffter ; 239 Davis and Philips ; 240 Parra‐H and Nates‐Parra ; 241 Fierro et al. ; 242 Nielsen et al. ; 243 Julier and Roulston ; 244 Winfree et al. ; 245 Hanley ; 246 Liu et al. ; 247 Gu et al. ; 248 Noreika and Kotze ; 249 Rey‐Velasco and Miranda‐Esquivel ; 250 Vanbergen et al. ; 251 Koivula et al. ; 252 Weller and Ganzhorn ; 253 Carvalho et al. ; 254 Aguilar‐Barquero and Jiménez‐Hernández ; 255 Fermon et al. ; 256 Ribeiro and Freitas ; 257 Gottschalk et al. ; 258 Cagle ; 259 Johnson et al. ; 260 Su et al. ; 261 Saldana‐Vazquez et al. ; 262 Nicolas et al. ; 263 Sakchoowong et al. ; 264 Yoshikura et al. ; 265 Hanley et al. ; 266 Connop et al. ; 267 Redpath et al. ; 268 Goulson et al. ; 269 Goulson et al. ; 270 Hatfield and LeBuhn ; 271 McFrederick and LeBuhn ; 272 Diekötter et al. ; 273 Darvill et al. ; 274 Matsumoto et al. ; 275 Knight et al. ; 276 Herrmann et al. ; 277 Ancrenaz et al. ; 278 Felton et al. ; 279 Knop et al. ; 280 Davis et al. ; 281 Hanson et al. ; 282 Ferreira and Alves ; 283 Luskin ; 284 Grogan et al. .

Figure 9

Data contributions by journal. The percentage of Data Sources (bars), Studies (circles), Sites (crosses) and samples (pluses) taken from each journal. Only journals from which more than one Data Source was taken are shown.