What would happen to polar bears if people built towns in the deep Arctic? Or to tiger populations, if India's grasslands turned to desert?
A new database that allows users to explore the factors that predispose different mammalian species to extinction – from human encroachment to slow reproductive rate – could be useful in planning conservation schemes, its developers say. Anyone can access the online system, YouTHERIA, which allows users to manipulate parameters including habitat ecology, litter size and diet, and test their own hypotheses.
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It relies on a vast database of all known and recently extinct mammals, called PanTHERIA, which lists details of the species' ecology, behavior, diet, geographical range and habitat, based on more than two decades of published research. The database also records the extent to which each of the 5000-odd species is being impacted by humans and habitat degradation.
