The combination of the fossil record and conservation biology has recently become of great interest. Several studies have suggested that the fossil record, with its large number of documented extinction events, provides excellent opportunities to explore the effects of various traits on the extinction risk of species. This knowledge is of high importance for living species and current questions in conservation. However, only a few studies have examined the connection of fossil and neontological data. We collected trait data on morphology, ecology and geography from 354 fossil amphibian species from several databases and the literature. All traits are assumed to have an influence on extinction risk. We built a generalized boosted model that analyzed the impact of these traits on the stratigraphic duration of species in the fossil record. The longer a species was recorded in the fossil record, the lower its average extinction risk was presumed during its lifespan. We then used this fossil-calibrated model to predict the extinction risk for 1382 living amphibian species and compare these predictions with their IUCN Red List assessments.
Results/Conclusions
We observed a high consensus between our predicted species durations and the current IUCN Red List status of living amphibian species. Based on amphibians from different time periods and taxonomic groups we could confirm that the most common Red List assessment procedures perform well on modern species. Our model supports the importance of geographic range size for a species' extinction risk and found that today's Data Deficient species are mainly predicted to experience short durations, hinting at their likely high threat status. Additionally, we identified several species that showed unusual predicted durations compared to others within their Red List category, which might hint at potential misclassification in the Red List.
Our study shows that the fossil record can be a suitable tool for the evaluation of a species Red List status, and that it can indeed add to our knowledge about extinction risk-influencing traits of living species by providing various cases of extinction events. We observe that the traits influencing the extinction risk of species seem to span the different time scales of fossil and contemporary studies, making a comparison possible and therefore tackling a main critique of the integration of fossil and contemporary studies.