WCS 3-Sentence Science

Scientists Create Universal Index for Species Loss

April 28, 2019

Photo credit: James Allan

Each year, Wildlife Conservation Society scientists publish more than 300 peer-reviewed studies and papers. “WCS 3-Sentence Science” is a regular tip-sheet — in bite sized helpings — of some of this published work.

Here we present James Watson’s work to develop a more accurate metric to measure species loss:

1. Habitat destruction is among the greatest threats facing biodiversity, affecting common and threatened species alike.
2. However, metrics for communicating its impacts typically overlook the non-threatened component of assemblages.
3. Authors have adapted a widely used measure to provide the first metric describing natural habitat loss for entire assemblages, inclusive of threatened and non-threatened species, which can now be easily described and systematically tracked.

Study and Journal: “A composite measure of habitat loss for entire assemblages of species” from Conservation Biology
WCS Co-Author(s): James Watson, Director or WCS Science and Research Initiative

For more information, contact: Stephen Sautner, 718–220–3682, ssautner@wcs.org.