Lawrence N. Hudson

TL;DR: A terrestrial assemblage database of unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage is analysed to quantify local biodiversity responses to land use and related changes and shows that in the worst-affected habitats, pressures reduce within-sample species richness by an average of 76.5%, total abundance by 39.5% and rarefaction-based richness by 40.3%.

TL;DR: It is estimated that land use and related pressures have already reduced local biodiversity intactness—the average proportion of natural biodiversity remaining in local ecosystems—beyond its recently proposed planetary boundary across 58.1% of the world’s land surface, where 71.4%) of the human population live.

TL;DR: Using a new global biodiversity database with unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage, four biodiversity measures are compared at sites sampled in multiple land uses inside and outside protected areas to reinforce the global importance of protected areas but suggest that protection does not consistently benefit species with small ranges or increase the variety of ecological niches.

TL;DR: This is the first worldwide synthetic analysis of how individual species in four major taxonomic groups—invertebrates, ‘herptiles’ (reptiles and amphibians), mammals and birds—respond to multiple human pressures in tropical and sub-tropical forests.

TL;DR: A new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world is described and assessed.