Fig 1.
Schematic of the weighting process.
Systems (Terrestrial/Freshwater/Marine) are weighted equally. Within each system, the proportion of species found across the realms that compose that system (the length of the bars above) is used to proportionally weight each realm's index. Within each realm, the diversity of species is used to weight taxonomic indices (the size of the grey-scale sections of the bars above).
Fig 2.
Global vertebrate richness map overlaid with populations recorded in the Living Planet Database.
Species richness map reproduced from [20]
Fig 3.
Comparison of number of known species and number of species recorded within the Living Planet Database.
Colours represent different biogeographic realms, shapes indicate species groups and overlaid lines show 1 and 99% representation (dotted) and increments in between (solid). A–terrestrial and freshwater species and realms; B–marine species and realms
Fig 4.
Comparison of the unweighted and diversity weighted Living Planet Index for the Palearctic realm.
Green shows the unweighted index (LPI-U), orange shows the diversity weighted index (LPI-D). Solid coloured lines show the average trend and shaded regions show the 95% confidence interval of that trend.
Fig 5.
Comparison of the unweighted and diversity-weighted Living Planet Index for the global data set.
Green shows the unweighted index (Global LPI-U), orange shows the diversity weighted index (Global LPI-D). Solid coloured lines show the average trend and shaded regions show the 95% confidence interval of that trend.
Fig 6.
Comparison of the unweighted and diversity weighted Living Planet Index for each System (A -Terrestrial, B -Freshwater and C -Marine). In each case, green shows the unweighted index (LPI-U), orange shows the diversity weighted index (LPI-D). Solid coloured lines show the average trend and shaded regions show the 95% confidence interval of that trend.
Table 1.
Comparing the results of the weighted (LPI-D) and unweighted (LPI-U) indices in 2012.
Confidence intervals are calculated from 10,000 bootstraps.
Fig 7.
The impact of removing species groups for which the Living Planet Database has < 1% representation.
Green trends show the Living Planet Index for all groups, orange trends show trends without less represented groups. Upper row shows trends calculated using the weighted (LPI-D) method, lower rows show the unweighted (LPI-U) method. Solid lines show the average trend, shaded regions show 95% confidence intervals. Stars (*) indicate when the final 2012 index values are significantly different.
Table 2.
Comparing the proportion of species within the Living Planet Database (LPI) and the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species (IUCN) for each Red List category (LC–Least Concern, NT/LR–Near Threatened/Lower Risk, VU—Vulnerable, EN–Endangered, CR–Critically Endangered).