If habitat destruction or overexploitation of populations is severe, species loss can occur
directly and abruptly. Yet the final descent to extinction is often driven by synergistic …

We present revised estimates of the numbers of accepted species of flowering plants
(369,434), seed plants (370,492), vascular plants (383,671) and land plants (403,911) …

Plants provide fundamental support systems for life on Earth and are the basis for all
terrestrial ecosystems; a decline in plant diversity will be detrimental to all other groups of …

Species differ in their biological susceptibility to extinction, but the set of traits determining
susceptibility varies across taxa. It is yet unclear which patterns are common to all taxa, and …

Herbarium specimens provide verifiable and citable evidence of the occurrence of particular
plants at particular points in space and time, and are vital resources for assessing extinction …

Governments have set the ambitious target of reducing biodiversity loss by the year 2010.
The scientific community now faces the challenge of assessing the progress made towards …

There is a concerted global effort to digitize biodiversity occurrence data from herbarium and
museum collections that together offer an unparalleled archive of life on Earth over the past …

Analyses of distribution, diversity, endemism, and taxonomic effort for Rubiaceae are
reported, based on queries from a World Rubiaceae Checklist database. Rubiaceae are …

At the 2002 Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, 190 countries
endorsed a commitment to achieve, by 2010, a significant reduction of the current rate of …

The world's governments have identified reducing the rate of biodiversity loss as a global
priority. However, we lack robust measures of progress toward this target. Developing …