Factors driving the global decline of cycad diversity.

ABSTRACT: Mounting evidence indicates that we are witnessing the sixth mass extinction period. Given the important goods and services biodiversity delivers to humans, there is a need for a continued commitment to investigate what pre-disposes some taxa to greater risk of extinction. Here, we investigate this question using a phylogenetic comparative method and fitting a cumulative link mixed effect model on biological, ecological and evolutionary data of cycads, the most threatened lineage in the plant kingdom. We identified nine groups of threats to cycads, with habitat loss, over-collection, fire and reproduction failure being the most prominent, but only four of these threats (habitat loss, over-collection, medicinal uses and reproduction failure) clustered on the cycad tree of life. This cluster

SUBMITTER: Mankga LT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5506724 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature