By Cheyenne Macdonald For Dailymail.com
Published: 23:38 BST, 6 May 2019 | Updated: 23:38 BST, 6 May 2019
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The world’s amphibians may be in even graver danger than we’ve thought, a new report warns.
A new analysis of the risks faced by the 8,000 or so known amphibian species has found that up to 50 percent may be at risk of extinction, in a dramatic rise from earlier estimates.
The spike stems from the inclusion of roughly 2,200 species that were previously under-represented due to lack of data; now, based on the new models, researchers say at least another 1,000 species are facing the threat of extinction.
The study comes on the heels of a worrying UN report that found plant and animal species today are being wiped out at unprecedented rates.
The world’s amphibians may be in even graver danger than we’ve thought, a new report warns. A new analysis of the risks faced by the 8,000 or so known amphibian species has found that up to 50 percent may be at risk of extinction. File photo
In the new study published to the journal Current Biology, researchers used a technique dubbed trait-based spatio-phylogenetic statistical framework to assess the extinction risks of data-deficient species.
This combined data on their ecology, geography, and evolutionary attributes with the associated extinction risks of each factor to make a prediction.
Only about 44 percent of amphibians currently have up-to-date risk assessments, the team notes.
‘We found that more than 1,000 data-deficient
