DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.11220273
title: Data from: Island biodiversity in peril: anticipating a loss of mammals' functional diversity with future species extinctions

description: Islands are biodiversity hotspots that host unique assemblages. However, a substantial proportion of island species are threatened and their long-term survival is uncertain. Identifying and preserving vulnerable species has become a priority, but it is also essential to combine this information with other facets of biodiversity like functional diversity, to understand how future extinctions might affect ecosystem stability and functioning. Focusing on mammals, we (i) assessed how much functional space would be lost if threatened species go extinct, (ii) determined the minimum number of extinctions which would cause a significant functional loss, (iii) identified the characteristics (e.g., biotic, climatic, geographic, or orographic) of the islands most vulnerable to future changes in the functional space, and (iv) quantified how much of that potential functional loss would be offset by introduced species. Using trait information for 1,474 mammal species occurring in 318 islands worldwide, we built trait probability density functions to quantify changes in functional richness and functional redundancy in each island if the mammals categorized by IUCN as threatened disappeared. We found that the extinction of threatened mammals would reduce the functional space in 63% of the assessed islands, although these extinctions in general would cause a reduction of less than 15% of their overall functional space. Also, on most islands, the extinction of just a few species would be sufficient to cause a significant loss of functional diversity. The potential functional loss would be higher on small, isolated and/or species rich islands and, in general, the functional space lost would not be offset by introduced species. Our results show that the preservation of native species and their ecological roles remains crucial for maintaining the current functioning of island ecosystems. Therefore, conservation measures considering functional diversity are imperative to safeguard the unique functional roles of threatened mammal species on islands.

Datasets and R scripts provided: 

1. Mammals_occurrence_islands.xlxs - Matrix of presence/absence of mammals species (columns) per island (rows) and bibliographic sources from which the information has been extracted. Islands are grouped according to the zoogeographical regions proposed by Holt el al. (2013).

2. Traits_matrix.csv – Matrix of species functional traits included in this study and the bibliographic sources of this information. Note that trait values are scaled and centered and that some of them have been imputed (see Methods section of the original manuscript).

3. Functional_space_analysis.R – script to:

·       Build the functional space of islands

·       Calculate observed functional richness and functional redundancy

·       Calculate functional richness and functional redundancy after simulating the extinction of threatened species

·       Calculate the functional space offset by introduced species     

4. mixed_models_islands.R - R script to perform the linear mixed models to explore whether islands with higher values of predicted functional diversity loss due to threatened species extinction share some characteristics.

5. data_models_islands.csv - Dataset used to perform the models. For each island the following information is provided:





Island ID (ID)

Number of species (SppRich)

Number of threatened species (Thre_sp)

Functional richness (Island_FRic)

Functional redundancy (Island_Red)

Functional richness standard effect size (SES_FRic)

Functional redundancy standard effect size (SES_FRed)

Island group (Archipielago)

Island past connectivity (Type)

Percentage of protected area coverage (protected_percentageI_VI)

Distance to the nearest continent (dContinent_km)

Mean annual temperature (Anntemp_promedio)

Mean annual precipitation (Annprec_promedio)

Island area (Area_km2)

Maximum elevation (Elev_max)

Species richness (SR)

Mean human footprint (Human_foot)

Distance to the nearest larger landmass (distance_biggerLandmass)



Island area, distance to the nearest continent and distance to the nearest larger landmass were calculated with ArcMap (ESRI, 2019) and the ‘terra 1.7-71’ R package (Hijmans, 2023), using the shapefile of the world’s islands available in Martin et al. (2022). Distance to the nearest mainland and to the nearest larger landmass were calculated as the shortest distance between coastlines (Weigelt & Kreft, 2013). Maximum elevation of each island was extracted from the Global Bathymetry and Elevation Database (Becker et al., 2009). We also used this database to access the bathymetry around the continents and islands and determine whether an island was connected to the mainland during the Last Glacial Maximum (about 20,000 years ago), assuming a sea level of 122 m below the present level (glacial maximum mainland connection; Weigelt, Jetz and Kreft, 2013). Averaged values of annual temperature and annual precipitation for each island were calculated using the climatic variables available in the CHELSA 2.1 database (Karger et al., 2018) at a resolution of 30 arc seconds. To calculate the percentage of protected area on each island, we gathered the protected surface’s shapefile from The World Database on Protected Areas (UNEP-WCMC & IUCN, 2022). Finally, we used the mean human footprint index from Human Footprint maps (see Venter et al., 2018).

References

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