TY - JOUR T1 - Global Plant Extinction Risk Assessment Inform Novel Biodiversity Hotspots JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2021.10.08.463027 SP - 2021.10.08.463027 AU - Thomas Haevermans AU - Jessica Tressou AU - Joon Kwon AU - Roseli Pellens AU - Anne Dubéarnès AU - Simon Veron AU - Liliane Bel AU - Stéphane Dervaux AU - Juliette Dibie-Barthelemy AU - Myriam Gaudeul AU - Rafaël Govaerts AU - Gwenaël Le Bras AU - Serge Muller AU - Germinal Rouhan AU - Corinne Sarthou AU - Lydie Soler Y1 - 2021/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/10/09/2021.10.08.463027.abstract N2 - Curbing biodiversity loss and its impact on ecosystem services, resilience and Nature’s Contributions to People is one of the main challenges of our generation (IPBES, 2019b, 2019a; Secretariat of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, 2020). A global baseline assessment of the threat status of all of biodiversity is crucial to monitor the progress of conservation policies worldwide (Mace & al., 2000; Secretariat of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, 2021) and target priority areas for conservation (Walker & al., 2021). However, the magnitude of the task seems insurmountable, as even listing the organisms already known to science is a challenge (Nic Lughadha & al., 2016; Borsch & al., 2020; Govaerts & al., 2021). A new approach is needed to overcome this stumbling block and scale-up the assessment of extinction risk. Here we show that analyses of natural history mega-datasets using artificial intelligence allows us to predict a baseline conservation status for all vascular plants and identify target areas for conservation corresponding to hotspots optimally capturing different aspects of biodiversity. We illustrate the strong potential of AI-based methods to reliably predict extinction risk on a global scale. Our approach not only retrieved recognized biodiversity hotspots but identified new areas that may guide future global conservation action (Myers & al., 2000; Brooks & al., 2006). To further work in this area and guide the targets of the post-2020 biodiversity framework (Díaz & al., 2020a; Secretariat of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity, 2020; Mair & al., 2021), it will be necessary to accelerate the acquisition of fundamental data and allow inclusion of social and economic factors (Possingham & Wilson, 2005).Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -