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Science 10 September 2004:
Vol. 305. no. 5690, pp. 1632 - 1634
DOI: 10.1126/science.1101101
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Reports

Species Coextinctions and the Biodiversity Crisis

Lian Pin Koh,1*{dagger} Robert R. Dunn,2*{ddagger} Navjot S. Sodhi,1§ Robert K. Colwell,3 Heather C. Proctor,4 Vincent S. Smith5||

To assess the coextinction of species (the loss of a species upon the loss of another), we present a probabilistic model, scaled with empirical data. The model examines the relationship between coextinction levels (proportion of species extinct) of affiliates and their hosts across a wide range of coevolved interspecific systems: pollinating Ficus wasps and Ficus, parasites and their hosts, butterflies and their larval host plants, and ant butterflies and their host ants. Applying a nomographic method based on mean host specificity (number of host species per affiliate species), we estimate that 6300 affiliate species are "coendangered" with host species currently listed as endangered. Current extinction estimates need to be recalibrated by taking species coextinctions into account.

1 Department of Biological Sciences, National University of Singapore, 14 Science Drive 4, Singapore 117543.
2 Department of Environmental Biology, Curtin University of Technology, GPO Box U1987 Perth, Western Australia 6845.
3 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269–3043, USA.
4 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2E9, Canada.
5 Institute of Biomedical and Life Sciences, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, United Kingdom.



* These authors contributed equally to this work.

{dagger} Present address: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08544–1003, USA.

{ddagger} Present address: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, 1416 Circle Drive, 569 Dabney Hall, Knoxville, TN 37996–1610, USA.

|| Present address: Illinois Natural History Survey, 607 East Peabody Drive, Champaign, IL 61820–6970, USA.

§ To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: dbsns{at}nus.edu.sg

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