An article recently published in the renowned journal PNAS indicates a substantial lack of data on various species – which we would need for a better understanding of the dynamics of population developments and how our planet will change during upcoming decades.
Given the current species extinction rates, evidence-based policies to conserve at-risk species are urgently needed. Ultimately, the extinction of a species is determined by birth and death rates, which drive populations to increase or decline. Therefore, demographic data are essential to inform species conservation policies or to develop extinction risk assessments. Demographic information provides an indispensable bedrock for insights to tackle species sustainable management and deepens understanding of ecological and evolutionary processes. The authors developed a Demographic Species Knowledge Index that classifies the demographic information for 32,144 tetrapod species.