Journal article
One-quarter of freshwater fauna threatened with extinction
- Abstract:
- Freshwater ecosystems are highly biodiverse1 and important for livelihoods and economic development2, but are under substantial stress3. To date, comprehensive global assessments of extinction risk have not included any speciose groups primarily living in freshwaters. Consequently, data from predominantly terrestrial tetrapods4,5 are used to guide environmental policy6 and conservation prioritization7, whereas recent proposals for target setting in freshwaters use abiotic factors8–13. However, there is evidence14–17 that such data are insufficient to represent the needs of freshwater species and achieve biodiversity goals18,19. Here we present the results of a multi-taxon global freshwater fauna assessment for The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species covering 23,496 decapod crustaceans, fishes and odonates, finding that one-quarter are threatened with extinction. Prevalent threats include pollution, dams and water extraction, agriculture and invasive species, with overharvesting also driving extinctions. We also examined the degree of surrogacy of both threatened tetrapods and freshwater abiotic factors (water stress and nitrogen) for threatened freshwater species. Threatened tetrapods are good surrogates when prioritizing sites to maximize rarity-weighted richness, but poorer when prioritizing based on the most range-restricted species. However, they are much better surrogates than abiotic factors, which perform worse than random. Thus, although global priority regions identified for tetrapod conservation are broadly reflective of those for freshwater faunas, given differences in key threats and habitats, meeting the needs of tetrapods cannot be assumed sufficient to conserve freshwater species at local scales.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 8.4MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41586-024-08375-z
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature More from this journal
- Volume:
- 638
- Issue:
- 8049
- Pages:
- 138–145
- Publication date:
- 2025-01-08
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-11-08
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1476-4687
- ISSN:
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0028-0836
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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2074954
- Local pid:
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pubs:2074954
- Deposit date:
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2025-01-09
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Sayer et al
- Copyright date:
- 2025
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2025. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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