Data Deficient Species More Prone To Go Extinct

In a bid to safeguard biodiversity, both theoretical and practical initiatives have been taken by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which has a database of most of the life on the planet.

All the species are divided into categories like near threatened, vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered. However, due to lack of study, research and survey they also do have a category known as “Data Deficient” (DD).

Many are trying to bridge the data deficiency gap but a new study by researchers from Norwegian University Of Science And Technology suggests that data deficient species are more prone to go extinct compared to well studied species.

According to the study, which was published in Communications Biology, a species is considered DD if there is insufficient data on its range or population, and these species are “usually neglected” in studies analyzing the benefits of biodiversity.

Governments utilise the IUCN “red list” to determine which species should receive priority for conservation efforts and most of the times threatened species receive more attention and DD category remain untouched.

A species should be classed as DD if it is possible to classify it as both Critically Endangered (CR) and Least Concern (LC) due to uncertain data.

However, DD is not the proper category if the assessor believes a species to not be LC but is unsure of its precise threat level.

In this situation, the assessor must make a choice and classify the species according to its risk tolerance.

It is significant to highlight that  most do not differentiate between the DD species based on the basis for that classification.

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