Putting together the Who’s Who of bats, bears, beaked whales and all of Earth’s other known mammals was a gigantic task ably assisted by a Field Museum scientific team with access to one of the planet’s most extensive and diverse mammal collections.

A team headed by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) is releasing its comprehensive status on the world’s mammals, including assessments of diversity, threat and knowledge of the creatures.  The Oct. 10 issue of Science will feature the results of the study.

A major reason for doing the assessment is to get a picture of how mammals on our planet are doing.  The news isn’t good.  One in four appears to be threatened with extinction and half the known species appear to be losing rather than gaining population.  For land mammals, destruction or degradation of their habitats is the biggest threat, while marine mammals suffer more from accident deaths stemming from fishing practices and pollution.

Field Museum Provides “Gold Standard” for Study

The comprehensive assessment, which covers 5,487 wild mammal species, represents five years of work by more than 1,700 scientists from 130 countries and is the first update on mammals since 1996.

Among those scientists were seven affiliated with Chicago’s Field Museum who helped colleagues from around the world by accessing the museum’s data base of 200,000 records that document the existence and relationships of thousands of species.  Field Museum zoologists have active survey programs and expertise in Asia, Africa, and the Americas; their recent collections inform and authenticate the status report.  Just this summer, Field zoologists Bill Stanley, Steve Goodman, and Julian Kerbis Peterhans returned to Chicago with important new collections from Tanzania, Madagascar, and the Congo Basin.

“The Field Museum provides the gold standard for biodiversity studies,” said Lawrence Heaney, a Field mammal curator and co-author of the study.  “Our records are based on research collections that are permanent and are constantly updated.”

Scientists Discover and Describe New Species

Besides information about mammals gathered over the 115 years that the Field Museum’s collection has existed, scientists have access to specimens that can provide genetic material and anatomic information to help clarify whether animals are members of different species, are part of a subspecies, or fall into some other category.

In the current mammal update from the IUCN, such questions loomed often as scientists raised the number of recognized species by nearly 20 percent over what it had been just 14 years ago.  This included 349 newly described species and 512 others that saw their status elevated to full-fledged species from some lesser category.

An example is the clouded leopard in Southeastern Asia, which was recently split into two separate species, with one living on the Southeast Asian continent and another native to the island of Borneo.

“Scientists are discovering 25 new mammal species a year,” said Bruce Patterson, a Field mammal curator and also a study co-author.  “We’re still describing them.  These aren’t beetles or flies.  They are our fellow vertebrates living on this planet.  And we don’t know them all.”

Storing thousands of samples in its collection, the Field can provide scientists access to specimen that may be difficult to find or even extinct for analysis with the latest technology.  Analysis of DNA is now possible for animals that lived and died before scientists even knew that DNA existed.

“We also can do isotopic analysis and study anatomy using a scanning electron microscope,” said Heaney, again applying techniques that were unknown at the time when the collection samples were taken.

Although many mammal species are endangered, the Field Museum’s Patterson found at least one upbeat message in the assessment project.  “It was possible to marshal this much expertise and information and focus it on critical environmental issues,” he said, “and it was all privately funded.  That is impressive.”

One of the smallest seals – the Caspian has joined a growing list of mammal species in danger of extinction.

Scientists from the University of Leeds together with international partners have documented the disastrous decline of the seal a species found only in the land-locked waters of the Caspian Sea – in a series of surveys which reveal a 90 per cent drop in numbers in the last 100 years.

The research findings have prompted the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to move the Caspian seal from the Vulnerable category to Endangered on its official IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, announced today in Barcelona [06 October 2008].

Dr Simon Goodman of Leeds’ Faculty of Biological Sciences says: “Each female has just one pup a year, so with numbers at such a low levels, every fertile female that dies is a nail in the coffin of the species.  We’re hoping that the seal’s change in Red List status will help raise awareness about their plight, and the many important conservation issues facing the whole Caspian ecosystem.”

Commercial hunting, habitat degradation, disease, pollution and drowning in fishing nets have caused the population of the seal collapse from more than 1 million at the start of the 20th century to around 100,000 today.

Results from surveys conducted in 2005 and 2006, published recently in the scientific journal Ambio, show that in 2006 there were only 17,000 breeding females, barely enough to keep the population viable, given the low survival rate of pups.

Moreover, new results from surveys conducted by the team in 2007 and 2008, show that since 2005 the number of pups being born has plummeted by a catastrophic further 60 per cent to just 6,000-7,000, and the number of adults seen on the breeding grounds of the winter ice-field is down by a third on 2005.

With commercial hunters from Dagestan in the Russian Federation killing more than 8,000 pups in recent years, the team is urging the governments of the Caspian countries to instate a ban on hunting as the first step in avoiding further declines.  “Without a suite of conservation measures there is a very high risk the species will become extinct, and possibly within our lifetime,” says Dr Goodman.

The team is using its latest figures and ongoing research to develop a conservation action plan, which will prioritise a ban on hunting the seal and establish protected areas with the countries bordering the Caspian Sea.  The basic plan has been completed, but the main recommendations are yet to be fully implemented by the countries of the region.

Dr Susan Wilson, a consultant in seal conservation biology and one of the authors of the Ambio paper says: “Although there are no easy fixes to the problems facing Caspian seals, we hope to get some concrete measures in place over the next year, particularly in Kazakhstan where the government has been quick to recognise the need for urgent action.”

From majestic African elephants to tiny and often unappreciated rodents, mammals on Earth are in a state of crisis.  One in four mammal species on Earth is being pushed to extinction, according to the Global Mammal Assessment, the most comprehensive assessment of the world’s mammals.

Writing in the October 10 issue of Science, (”The Status of the World’s Land and Marine Mammals: Diversity, Threat, and Knowledge”) and unveiling a “Red List” of endangered mammal species (at the International Union for Conservation of Nature World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Spain), the researchers who worked on the exhaustive study say that from 25 percent to 36 percent of species may be in danger of extinction.

“It is frightening that after millions and millions of years of evolution that have given rise to the biodiversity of mammals we are perched on a crisis where 25 percent of species are threatened with being lost forever,” said Andrew Smith, an Arizona State University professor who played a key role in the mammalian assessment.  Smith and his research assistant, Charlotte Johnson, are two of the 103 authors of the Science paper.

The Global Mammal Assessment was conducted by more than 1,800 scientists from more than 130 countries working under the auspices of the International Union for Conservation of Nature.  It was made possible by the volunteer help of IUCN Species Survival Commission’s specialist groups and collaborations between top institutions and universities, including Arizona State University, Texas A&M University, University of Virginia, Conservation International, Sapienza Università di Roma and the Zoological Society of London.

The mammal assessment is the first comprehensive look at the health of terrestrial and marine mammals across the globe.  It is a companion assessment to similar documentation of the world’s amphibians, released four years ago by IUCN.

“Mammals are important because they play key roles in ecosystems and provide important benefits to humans,” Smith explained.  “If you lose a mammal, you often are in danger of losing many other species.”

The assessment shows that at least 1,141 of the 5,487 mammals on Earth are known to be threatened with extinction.  At least 76 mammals have become extinct since 1500.  The real situation could be much worse as 836 mammals are listed as “data deficient.”

The culprits driving this precarious position include habitat loss and over exploitation for terrestrial mammals, and pollution, global warming and over exploitation for marine mammals, Smith said.

“Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live,” said Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN director general in announcing the Red List.  “We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives.”

In the Science article, which includes the contributions of more than 1,700 scientists, the researchers state that 188 mammals are in the highest threat category of “critically endangered,” including the Iberian Lynx (Lynx pardinus), which has a population of just 84 to 143 adults and has continued to decline due to a shortage of its primary prey, the European Rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus).

China’s Père David’s Deer (Elaphurus davidianus), is listed as “extinct in the wild.”  However, the captive and semi-captive populations have increased in recent years and it is possible that truly wild populations could be re-established soon.  It may be too late, however, to save the additional 29 species that have been flagged as “critically endangered, possibly extinct” including Cuba’s Little Earth Hutia (Mesocapromys sanfelipensis), which has not been seen in nearly 40 years.

Nearly 450 mammals have been listed as “endangered,” including the Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus harrisii), after its global population declined by more than 60 percent in the last 10 years due to a fatal infectious facial cancer.  The Fishing Cat (Prionailurus viverrinus), found in Southeast Asia, was listed as endangered due to habitat loss in wetlands.  Similarly, status of the Caspian Seal (Pusa caspica) was moved to endangered.  Its population has declined by 90 percent in the last 100 years due to unsustainable hunting and habitat degradation.

Habitat loss and degradation affect 40 percent of the world’s mammals.  It is most extreme in Central and South America, west, east and central Africa, Madagascar, and in south and Southeast Asia.  Over harvesting is wiping out larger mammals, especially in Southeast Asia, but also in parts of Africa and South America.

The Grey-faced Sengi or Elephant-shrew (Rhynchocyon udzungwensis) is only known from two forests in the Udzungwa Mountains of Tanzania, both of which are protected but vulnerable to fires.  The species was first described this year and has been placed in the vulnerable category.

In order to improve the current state of these mammals, Smith suggests a few actions that could help immediately.

“Curtail the trade of endangered species,” he said.  “It would do an amazing amount of good for stabilizing the situation in Southeast Asia, which is a biodiversity hot spot.  There also is so much needless habitat loss.  Trees from too many lush tropical forests end up as coffee tables or in high-end furniture.”

Conservation’s role

“Our results paint a bleak picture of the global status of mammals worldwide,” the authors of the Science article state.  “Yet, more than simply reporting on the depressing status of the world’s mammals, these Red List data can and should be used to inform strategies for addressing this crisis, for example, to identify priority species and areas for conservation.

“Further, these data can be used to indicate trends in conservation status over time,” they added.  “Despite the general deterioration in the status of mammals, our data also show that species recoveries are possible through targeted conservation efforts.”

For example, the Black-footed Ferret (Mustela nigripes) moved from extinct in the wild to endangered after a successful reintroduction by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service into eight western states and Mexico from 1991-2008.  Similarly, the Wild Horse (Equus ferus) moved from extinct in the wild in 1996 to critically endangered this year after successful reintroductions started in Mongolia in the early 1990s.

The African Elephant (Loxodonta africana) moved from vulnerable to near threatened, although its status varies considerably across its range.  The move reflects the recent and ongoing population increases in major populations in southern and eastern Africa.  These increases are big enough to outweigh any decreases that may be taking place elsewhere.

“This work sets a benchmark for us to understand what is happening with biodiversity of mammals worldwide and provides a platform from which all future conservation efforts can be measured,” said Smith, who initiated the database that was used to inventory the world’s mammals.  “This effort hopefully will spur greater attention on the conservation of mammals and the habitats they occupy, for the benefit of all biodiversity.”

T. rex and Triceratops: In the popular imagination, dinosaurs are extraordinary reptiles that ruled the world for over 160 million years. But Steve Brusatte, a doctoral student at Columbia University who is an affiliate of the American Museum of Natural History, and colleagues are challenging this idea with new fossil data and math. By comparing early dinosaurs to their competitors, the crurotarsan ancestors to crocodiles, they have found that dinosaurs were not “superior,” as has long been thought. Rather, crurotarsans were the more successful group during the 30 million years they overlapped until the devastating mass extinction 200 million years ago, an event that dinosaurs weathered successfully.

“For a long time it was thought that there was something special about dinosaurs that helped them become more successful during the Triassic, the first 30 million years of their history, but this isn’t true,” says Brusatte. “If any of us were standing by during the Triassic and asked which group would rule the world for the next 130 million years, we would have identified the crurotarsans, not dinosaurs.”

Both dinosaurs and crurotarsans evolved and filled some of the same niches after a massive extinction event that occurred at the end of the Permian (250 million years ago). Of the crurotarsan group, crocodilians are the only living members. But in the Triassic, crurotarsans were amazingly diverse—from giant carnivorous rauisuchians to long–snouted, flesh eating phytosaurs to herbivorous armored aetosaurs—and they have often been mistaken for dinosaurs in the fossil record, the animals that they probably competed with for the same resources. Both groups survived an extinction event 228 million years ago, but only a few crurotarsans—the crocodiles—squeaked through a period of rapid global warming at the end of the Triassic 200 million years ago. Dinosaurs faired better during the latter extinction: most types of dinosaurs survived until an asteroid ended their dominance 65 million years ago. It is because of this stroke of luck that dinosaurs were assumed to be the better competitors.

Brusatte and colleagues tested this assumption by measuring the evolution in both competing groups. Based on a database of 437 features of the skeletons of 64 species of dinosaurs and crurotarsans, as well as a new phylogenetic tree of these groups, they performed two calculations to look at the evolutionary pattern. The first measurement is of the disparity, or the known range of different body plans, of the two groups. Disparity is a reliable indicator of the different lifestyles, diets, and habitats of a group of animals. Remarkably, Brusatte and colleagues found that crurotarsans had twice the disparity of dinosaurs: They were exploring twice the range of body plans as early dinosaurs. “With this information, it’s difficult to argue that dinosaurs were ’superior’ during the Triassic. They just lucked out when the crurotarsans were hit hard at the end Triassic extinction,” says Brusatte.

The team also measured the rate of evolution in both dinosaurs and crurotarsans to see if dinosaurs were diversifying into new species at higher rates, as may be expected if they had special abilities or were outcompeting their rivals. But the comparison showed that the two groups were evolving at the same rate over the 30 million years that they overlapped.

“Many people like to think that evolution is progressive: mammals are better than dinosaurs because they came later. This is like progressive improvements in car technology—a Ford Taurus is demonstrably better than a Model T,” says coauthor Michael Benton, a paleontologist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom. “So it may be hard for us to accept that dinosaurs achieved their dominant position on earth largely by chance, just as mammals did when the dinosaurs were later wiped out by a meteorite strike.”

A third of reef-building corals around the world are threatened with extinction, according to the first-ever comprehensive global assessment to determine their conservation status. The study findings were published today by Science Express.

Leading coral experts joined forces with the Global Marine Species Assessment (GMSA) – a joint initiative of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Conservation International (CI) – to apply the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria to this important group of marine species.

“The results of this study are very disconcerting,” stated Kent Carpenter, lead author of the Science article, GMSA Director, IUCN Species Programme. “When corals die off, so do the other plants and animals that depend on coral reefs for food and shelter, and this can lead to the collapse of entire ecosystems.”

Built over millions of years, coral reefs are home to more than 25 percent of marine species, making them the most biologically diverse of marine ecosystems. Corals produce reefs in shallow tropical and sub-tropical seas and have been shown to be highly sensitive to changes in their environment.

Researchers identified the main threats to corals as climate change and localized stresses resulting from destructive fishing, declining water quality from pollution, and the degradation of coastal habitats. Climate change causes rising water temperatures and more intense solar radiation, which lead to coral bleaching and disease often resulting in mass coral mortality.

Shallow water corals have a symbiotic relationship with algae called zooxanthellae, which live in their soft tissues and provide the coral with essential nutrients and energy from photosynthesis and are the reason why corals have such beautiful colors. Coral bleaching is the result of a stress response, such as increased water temperatures, whereby the algae are expelled from the tissues, hence the term “bleaching.” Corals that have been bleached are weaker and more prone to attack from disease. Scientists believe that increased coral disease also is linked to higher sea temperatures and an increase in run-off pollution and sediments from the land.

Researchers predict that ocean acidification will be another serious threat facing coral reefs. As oceans absorb increasing amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, water acidity increases and pH decreases, severely impacting corals’ ability to build their skeletons that form the foundation of reefs.

The 39 scientists who co-authored this study agree that if rising sea surface temperatures continue to cause increased frequency of bleaching and disease events, many corals may not have enough time to replenish themselves and this could lead to extinctions.

“These results show that as a group, reef-building corals are more at risk of extinction than all terrestrial groups, apart from amphibians, and are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change,” said Roger McManus, CI’s vice president for marine programs. “The loss of the corals will have profound implications for millions of people who depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods.”

Coral reefs harbor fish and other marine resources important for coastal communities. They also help protect coastal towns and other near-shore habitats from severe erosion and flooding caused by tropical storms.

Staghorn (Acroporid) corals face the highest risk of extinction, with 52 percent of species listed in a threatened category. The Caribbean region has the highest number of highly threatened corals (Endangered and Critically Endangered), including the iconic elkhorn coral (Acropora palmata) which is listed as Critically Endangered. The high biodiversity “Coral Triangle” in the western Pacific’s Indo-Malay-Philippine Archipelago has the highest proportions of Vulnerable and Near-Threatened species in the Indo-Pacific, largely resulting from the high concentration of people living in many parts of the region.

Corals from the genera Favia and Porites were found to be the least threatened due to their relatively higher resistance to bleaching and disease. In addition, 141 species lacked sufficient information to be fully assessed and were therefore listed as Data Deficient. However, researchers believe that many of these species would have been listed as threatened if more information were available.

The results emphasize the widespread plight of coral reefs and the urgent need to enact conservation measures. “We either reduce our CO2 emission now or many corals will be lost forever,” says Julia Marton-Lefèvre, IUCN Director General. “Improving water quality, global education and the adequate funding of local conservation practices also are essential to protect the foundation of beautiful and valuable coral reef ecosystems.”

Coral experts participated in three workshops to analyze data on 845 reef-building coral species, including population range and size, life history traits, susceptibility to threats, and estimates of regional coral cover loss.

The reef-building corals assessment is one group of a number of strategic global assessments of marine species the GMSA has been conducting since 2006 at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Other assessments are being conducted on seagrasses and mangroves that are also important habitat-forming species, all marine fishes, and other important keystone invertebrates. By 2012, the GMSA plans to complete its comprehensive first stage assessment of the threat of extinction for over 20,000 marine plants and animals, providing an essential baseline for conservation plans around the world, and tracking the extinction risk of marine species.