The newly formed Mite Specialist Group of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission and the conservation of global mite diversity

Year 2021, Volume: 3 Issue: 2, 51 - 55, 31.07.2021

Sebahat K. Ozman-sullıvan , Gregory Thomas Sullıvan

https://doi.org/10.47121/acarolstud.973015

Cited By: 4

Abstract

The most serious environmental challenge facing humanity is the massive, widespread and continuing loss of biodiversity due to human activities. The commonly reported root causes of the decline and extinction of species are the degradation, destruction and fragmentation of habitat; pollution; pesticide use; invasive species; climate change; and over-exploitation; with co-extinction cascades accelerating the losses. The current alarming rate of loss of species across the biodiversity spectrum has ecological, economic, social, aesthetic, cultural and spiritual impacts that directly undermine the welfare of all humanity. This unprecedented crisis demands an urgent, science-based, comprehensive, coordinated, global response. Among the organizations responding to the multifaceted challenge of biodiversity loss is the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Its enormous pool of integrated expertise, technical capacity and policy experience makes the IUCN the global authority on the status of nature and the suite of measures needed to protect it. The largest of the IUCN’s six commissions is the Species Survival Commission, a science-based network of over 160 Specialist Groups, including 17 invertebrate groups; Red List Authorities; and Task Forces. Despite there being an estimated 500,000 – 1,500,000 mite species, and their ubiquity in global ecosystems and fundamental role in many ecological processes, mites have received minimal attention on the global conservation agenda. The role of the newly formed Mite Specialist Group, which gained official status in April 2021, is to redress that situation. The mission of the group, which currently includes 65 mite specialists, ecologists, botanists, environmentalists and conservation practitioners from 36 countries on five continents, is to contribute to a collaborative global effort to conserve mite diversity through research, education, advocacy, community engagement and specific conservation initiatives.

Keywords

Acari, biodiversity, co-extinction, endangered species, IUCN Red List

References

• Ceballos, G., Ehrlich, P.R. and Raven, P.H. 2020. Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 117 (24): 13596-13602. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1922686117
• Conservation International. 2021. Biodiversity hotspots: Targeted investment in nature’s most important places. Available https://www.conservation.org/priorities /biodiversity-hotspots (Last accessed: 19 May 2021).
• Fonseca, C.R. 2009. The silent mass extinction of insect herbivores in biodiversity hotspots. Conservation Biology, 23 (6): 1507-1515. doi: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2009.01327.x
• Harvey, J.A., Heinen, R., Armbrecht, I., Basset, Y., Baxter-Gilbert, J.H. et al. 2020. International scientists formulate a roadmap for insect conservation and recovery. Nature Ecology and Evolution, 4: 174-176. doi: 10.1038/s41559-019-1079-8
• Henriques, S., Böhm, M., Collen, B., Luedtke, J., Hoffmann, M. et al. 2020. Accelerating the monitoring of global biodiversity: Revisiting the sampled approach to generating Red List Indices. Conservation Letters, 13 (3): e12703. doi: 10.1111/conl.12703
• Hochkirch, A., Samways, M.J., Gerlach, J., Böhm, M., Williams, P. et al. 2021. A strategy for the next decade to address data deficiency in neglected biodiversity. Conservation Biology, 35 (2): 502-509. doi: 10.1111/cobi.13589
• Hu, X., Huang, B., Verones, F., Cavalett, O. and Cherubini, F. 2021. Overview of recent land-cover changes in biodiversity hotspots. Frontiers in Ecology and the Envi-ronment, 19: 91-97. doi: 10.1002/fee.2276
• IUCN, 2021. International Union for Conservation of Nature. Available https://www.iucn.org (Last accessed: 02 July 2021).
• Mittermeier, R.A., Robles Gil, P., Hoffman, M., Pilgrim, J., Brooks, T. et al. 2005. Hotspots revisited: Earth’s biologically richest and most endangered terrestrial ecoregions. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA, 392 pp.
• Myers, N. 1988. Threatened biotas: “hot spots” in tropical forests. Environmentalist, 8: 187-208. doi: 10.1007/BF02240252
• Myers, N., Mittermeier, R.A., Mittermeier, C.G., da Fonseca, G.A.B. and Kent, J. 2000. Biodiversity hotspots for con-servation priorities. Nature, 403: 853-858. doi: 10.1038/35002501
• Napierała, A., Książkiewicz-Parulska, Z. and Błoszyk, J. 2018. A Red List of mites from the suborder Uropodina (Acari: Parasitiformes) in Poland. Experimental and Applied Acarology, 75: 467-490. doi: 10.1007/s10493-018-0284-5
• Pimm, S.L. 2021. What is biodiversity conservation? Ambio, 50 (5): 976-980. doi: 10.1007/s13280-020-01399-5
• Pimm, S.L., Jenkins, C.N., Abell, R., Brooks, T., Gittleman, J.L. et al. 2014. The biodiversity of species and their rates of extinction, distribution and protection. Science, 344 (6187): 1246752. doi: 10.1126/science.1246752
• Stork, N.E. 2018. How many species of insects and other terrestrial arthropods are there on earth? Annual Review of Entomology, 63: 31-45. doi: 10.1146/annurev-ento-020117-043348
• Strona, G. and Bradshaw, C.J.A. 2018. Co-extinctions annihilate planetary life during extreme environmental change. Scientific reports, 8 (1): 16724. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-35068-1
• Sullivan, G.T. and Ozman-Sullivan, S.K. 2021. Alarming evidence of widespread mite extinctions in the shadows of plant, insect and vertebrate extinctions. Austral Ecology, 46 (1): 163-176. doi: 10.1111/aec.12932
• Tixier, M.-S. and Kreiter, S. 2009. Arthropods in biodiversity hotspots: the case of the Phytoseiidae (Acari: Mesostigmata). Biodiversity and Conservation, 18 (3): 507-527. doi: 10.1007/s10531-008-9517-y
• Wagner, D.L., Grames, E.M., Forister, M.L., Berenbaum, M.R. and Stopak, D. 2021. Insect decline in the Anthropocene: Death by a thousand cuts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 118 (2): e2023989118. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2023989118
• Walter, D.E. and Proctor, H.C. 2013. Mites: Ecology, evolution and behaviour: Life at a microscale. Second Edition. Springer, Dordrecht, The Netherlands, 404 pp. doi: 10.1007/978-94-007-7164-2