scholarly journals The Sixth Mass Extinction: fact, fiction or speculation?

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert H. Cowie ◽  
Philippe Bouchet ◽  
Benoît Fontaine
Keyword(s):  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Sixth Mass Extinction

Reducing the sixth mass extinction: Understanding the value of human-altered landscapes to the conservation of the world's largest terrestrial mammals

2020 ◽  
Vol 249 ◽  
pp. 108706 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Joaquín Torres-Romero ◽  
Anthony J. Giordano ◽  
Gerardo Ceballos ◽  
José Vicente López-Bao
Keyword(s):  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Terrestrial Mammals ◽  
Sixth Mass Extinction

scholarly journals Large-Scale Hybridisation as an Extinction Threat to the Suweon Treefrog (Hylidae: Dryophytes suweonensis)

Animals ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 764 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amaël Borzée ◽  
Jonathan J. Fong ◽  
Hoa Quynh Nguyen ◽  
Yikweon Jang
Keyword(s):  
Mitochondrial Dna ◽  
Species Distribution ◽  
Dna Sequences ◽  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Natural Habitats ◽  
Commensal Species ◽  
Polymorphic Microsatellites ◽  
Sixth Mass Extinction ◽  
Threaten Species

Amphibians are in the midst of a sixth mass extinction, and human activities play a major role in pushing species towards extinction. Landscape anthropisation has impacts that indirectly threaten species, in addition to the obvious destruction of natural habitats. For instance, land modification may bring human-commensal species in contact with sister-clades from which they were previously isolated. The species in these new contact zones are then able to hybridise to the point of reaching lineage fusion, through which the gene pool of the two species merges and one of the parental lineages becomes extirpated. Here, we documented the patterns of hybridisation between the spatially restricted D. suweonensis and the widespread D. japonicus. On the basis of the analysis of Cytochrome c oxidase subunit I mitochondrial DNA sequences (404 individuals from 35 sites) and six polymorphic microsatellites (381 individuals from 34 sites), we revealed a generalised, bi-directional, and geographically widespread hybridisation between the two species. Evidence of fertile back-crosses is provided by relatively high numbers of individuals in cyto-nuclear disequilibrium, as well as the presence of hybrid individuals further south than the species distribution limit, determined on the basis of call properties. Hybridisation is an additional threat to the endangered D. suweonensis.

Ecology in the Sixth Mass Extinction: Detecting and Understanding Rare Biotic Interactions

2019 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 119-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsa Youngsteadt ◽  
Margarita M López-Uribe ◽  
Clyde E Sorenson
Keyword(s):  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Biotic Interactions ◽  
Sixth Mass Extinction

scholarly journals Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (24) ◽  
pp. 13596-13602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerardo Ceballos ◽  
Paul R. Ehrlich ◽  
Peter H. Raven
Keyword(s):  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Endangered Species ◽  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Life Support ◽  
Human Impacts ◽  
Bird Species ◽  
Wildlife Trade ◽  
Ecological Interactions ◽  
Terrestrial Vertebrates ◽  
Sixth Mass Extinction

The ongoing sixth mass species extinction is the result of the destruction of component populations leading to eventual extirpation of entire species. Populations and species extinctions have severe implications for society through the degradation of ecosystem services. Here we assess the extinction crisis from a different perspective. We examine 29,400 species of terrestrial vertebrates, and determine which are on the brink of extinction because they have fewer than 1,000 individuals. There are 515 species on the brink (1.7% of the evaluated vertebrates). Around 94% of the populations of 77 mammal and bird species on the brink have been lost in the last century. Assuming all species on the brink have similar trends, more than 237,000 populations of those species have vanished since 1900. We conclude the human-caused sixth mass extinction is likely accelerating for several reasons. First, many of the species that have been driven to the brink will likely become extinct soon. Second, the distribution of those species highly coincides with hundreds of other endangered species, surviving in regions with high human impacts, suggesting ongoing regional biodiversity collapses. Third, close ecological interactions of species on the brink tend to move other species toward annihilation when they disappear—extinction breeds extinctions. Finally, human pressures on the biosphere are growing rapidly, and a recent example is the current coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic, linked to wildlife trade. Our results reemphasize the extreme urgency of taking much-expanded worldwide actions to save wild species and humanity’s crucial life-support systems from this existential threat.

scholarly journals Is IR going extinct?

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audra Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Existential Risk ◽  
Sixth Mass Extinction ◽  
Global Extinction ◽  
The Face ◽  
Mass Extinction Event ◽  
Nuclear Winter

A global extinction crisis may threaten the survival of most existing life forms. Influential discourses of ‘existential risk’ suggest that human extinction is a real possibility, while several decades of evidence from conservation biology suggests that the Earth may be entering a ‘sixth mass extinction event’. These conditions threaten the possibilities of survival and security that are central to most branches of International Relations. However, this discipline lacks a framework for addressing (mass) extinction. From notions of ‘nuclear winter’ and ‘omnicide’ to contemporary discourses on catastrophe, International Relations thinking has treated extinction as a superlative of death. This is a profound category mistake: extinction needs to be understood not in the ontic terms of life and death, but rather in the ontological context of be(com)ing and negation. Drawing on the work of theorists of the ‘inhuman’ such as Quentin Meillassoux, Claire Colebrook, Ray Brassier, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Nigel Clark, this article provides a pathway for thinking beyond existing horizons of survival and imagines a profound transformation of International Relations. Specifically, it outlines a mode of cosmopolitics that responds to the element of the inhuman and the forces of extinction. Rather than capitulating to narratives of tragedy, this cosmopolitics would make it possible to think beyond the restrictions of existing norms of ‘humanity’ to embrace an ethics of gratitude and to welcome the possibility of new worlds, even in the face of finitude.

scholarly journals Sustainable human behaviours for combating sixth mass extinction

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatik Baran Mandal
Keyword(s):  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Net Primary Productivity ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Conservation Strategies ◽  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
Root Cause ◽  
The People ◽  
Sixth Mass Extinction ◽  
The Commons

Background extinction is a natural phenomenon. Anthropogenic biodiversity loss has been addressed from the various view points. The debate is continuing to identify the root cause of the anthropogenic mass extinction, also called the sixth extinction. The present communication discusses various anthropogenic drivers of the biodiversity loss and explains the ongoing sixth mass extinction using Garrett Hardin's “the tragedy of the commons”. Such explanations provide options for policy makers and for us to save the precious biodiversity of our planet. It has been demonstrated that presently we share about one third of the Net Primary Productivity which must be reduced through reducing our food consumption and by reducing our utilization of energy. Promotion of sustainable human behaviours to ameliorate the problem of anthropogenic extinction or the sixth extinction has been discussed in the light of recent findings from neurobiology and molecular biology. Biodiversity conservation through providing benefit to the people may be effective conservation strategies which would save the interest of human civilizations as well as other life forms on the earth.

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