Article summary #2 – The 6th Mass Extinction

Description

This is a peer-reviewed article, meaning it was reviewed by research experts before it was approved for publishing. You will notice that this type of article is written in a language that is, likely, not familiar to you. You should not expect to understand it on your first read. Allow yourself to read it at least twice before starting your summary.  A summary of this article should be written by answering the questions below. Answers should be paraphrased, not copied directly from the text (also with the exception of answers up to one sentence long). Answers directly copied from the text will also not be graded.  Answer the following questions: How did this peer-reviewed article differ from every-day, news articles?  Which questions were addressed by the authors for this particular paper? What does “empirically derived” mean? How do the authors justify the questions asked? What is considered to be “modern extinction”? What are the five vertebrate taxa considered in this study? The authors focused on using conservative rates of modern extinction in order to avoid skepticism and to see if the use of the term “6th mass extinction” is still justified. They used two different categories: “highly conservative rates” and “conservative rates”. What were the criteria used for each category (see Table 1)? Why is 1900 considered separately from 1500 as the time for modern extinction rates? Answer the authors’ three research questions. According to the authors, how does the loss of biodiversity affect human well-being? Outside of human well-being, why do you think we should care about the loss of biodiversity? Do the authors believe that the exceptionally rapid loss of species (6th mass extinction) is still a questionable (controvertible) issue? Justify. On a human time scale, do the authors consider the loss of biodiversity (and biodiversity benefits) permanent? Why or why not? We’ve learned earlier this semester that mass extinction is one of the events leading to adaptive radiation. Why should the 6th mass extinction be seen as particularly alarming rather than just a means to adaptive radiation? What suggestions do the authors make to avoid such loss (specifically, what are three notably important issues that must be urgently dealt with)?