Story perspectives

Scientists Simplify IUCN Status to Binary Threat Classification

6/24/2026

Summary

Story summary

Researchers merged IUCN categories 1-2 and 3-4 into a binary non-threatened versus threatened classification.
They applied linear mixed models with extinction risk as the outcome, adding temporal category, realm interaction, and a random assemblage effect.
Analyses were run on the full dataset and separately on temperate regions, which contain most data.
Effect sizes were reported as Cohen’s d, calculated from t-values and degrees of freedom, using ggeffects, tidyverse, and rphylopic.

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Story summary

Researchers merged IUCN categories 1-2 and 3-4 into a binary non-threatened versus threatened classification.
They applied linear mixed models with extinction risk as the outcome, adding temporal category, realm interaction, and a random assemblage effect.
Analyses were run on the full dataset and separately on temperate regions, which contain most data.
Effect sizes were reported as Cohen’s d, calculated from t-values and degrees of freedom, using ggeffects, tidyverse, and rphylopic.