ArticleNature ecology & evolution2023
Biodiversity time series are biased towards increasing species richness in changing environments.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Synthesis of Population Trends Reveals Seascape-Wide Reorganisation of Biodiversity From Microalgae to Birds.Global change biology · 2025Pooled it
- Divergent patterns of richness and density in the global soil seed bank.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Linking species local trends from assemblage monitoring to global extinction risk.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Habitat-specific trends in taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity in European plant communities over a century.Nature communications · 2026Article
- A practical guide to characterising ecological coexistence.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Arthropod species loss underpins biomass declines.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Global spatiotemporal patterns of demographic fluctuations in terrestrial vertebrates during the Late Pleistocene.Science advances · 2025Article
- The global human impact on biodiversity.Nature · 2025Article
- Baselining Urban Ecosystems from Sentinel Species: Fitness, Flows, and Sinks.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Article
- Half a Century of Temperate Non-Forest Vegetation Changes: No Net Loss in Species Richness, but Considerable Shifts in Taxonomic and Functional Composition.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Temperature and biodiversity influence community stability differently in birds and fishes.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Article
- Multi-decadal improvements in the ecological quality of European rivers are not consistently reflected in biodiversity metrics.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The discrepancy between global loss and local constant species richness has led to debates over data quality, systematic biases in monitoring programmes and the adequacy of species richness to capture changes in biodiversity. We show that, more fundamentally, null expectations of stable richness can be wrong, despite independent yet equal colonization and extinction. We analysed fish and bird time series and found an overall richness increase. This increase reflects a systematic bias towards an earlier detection of colonizations than extinctions. To understand how much this bias influences richness trends, we simulated time series using a neutral model controlling for equilibrium richness and temporal autocorrelation (that is, no trend expected). These simulated time series showed significant changes in richness, highlighting the effect of temporal autocorrelation on the expected baseline for species richness changes. The finite nature of time series, the long persistence of declining populations and the potential strong dispersal limitation probably lead to richness changes when changing conditions promote compositional turnover. Temporal analyses of richness should incorporate this bias by considering appropriate neutral baselines for richness changes. Absence of richness trends over time, as previously reported, can actually reflect a negative deviation from the positive biodiversity trend expected by default.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.