Ecological correlates of extinction risk in Chinese birds

China is one of the countries with the richest bird biodiversity in the world. Among the 1372 Chinese birds, 146 species are considered threatened and three species are regionally extinct according to the officially released China Biodiversity Red List in 2015. Here, we conducted the first extensive analysis to systematically investigate the patterns and processes of extinction and threat in Chinese birds. We addressed the following four questions. First, is extinction risk randomly distributed among avian families in Chinese birds? Second, which families contain more threatened species than would be expected by chance? Third, which species traits are important in determining the extinction risk in Chinese birds using a multivariate phylogenetic comparative approach? Finally, is the form of the relationship between traits additive or nonadditive (synergistic)? We found that the extinction risk of Chinese birds was not randomly distributed among taxonomic families. The families that cont...