Global contemporary effective population sizes across taxonomic groups

Effective population size (Ne) is a particularly useful metric for conservation as it affects genetic drift, inbreeding and adaptive potential within populations. Current guidelines recommend a minimum Ne of 50 and 500 to avoid short-term inbreeding and to preserve long-term adaptive potential, respectively. However, the extent to which wild populations reach these thresholds globally has not been investigated, nor has the relationship between Ne and human activities. Through a quantitative review, we generated a dataset with 4610 georeferenced Ne estimates from 3829 unique populations, extracted from 723 articles. These data show that certain taxonomic groups are less likely to meet 50/500 thresholds and are disproportionately impacted by human activities; plant, mammal, and amphibian populations had a <54% probability of reaching  = 50 and a <9% probability of reaching  = 500. Populations listed as being of conservation concern according to the IUCN Red List had a smaller median..., Literature search, screening, and data extraction
A primary literature search was conducted using ISI Web of Science Core Collection and any articles that referenced two popular single-sample Ne estimation software packages: LDNe (Waples & Do, 2008), and NeEstimator v2 (Do et al., 2014). The initial search included 4513 articles published up to the search date of May 26, 2020. Articles were screened for relevance in two steps, first based on title and abstract, and then based on the full text. For each step, a consistency check was performed using 100 articles to ensure they were screened consistently between reviewers (n = 6). We required a kappa score (Collaboration for Environmental Evidence, 2020) of ³ 0.6 in order to proceed with screening of the remaining articles. Articles were screened based on three criteria: (1) Is an estimate of Ne or Nb reported; (2) for a wild animal or plant population; (3) using a single-sample genetic estimation method. Further details on the literat..., , # Global contemporary effective population sizes across taxonomic groups

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p2ngf1vzm](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.p2ngf1vzm)

Through a quantitative review, we generated a dataset with 5498 georeferenced *Ne* and *Nb* estimates from 3829 unique populations, extracted from 723 articles.

## Description of the data and file structure

There are two data files (.csv) associated with this dataset. The first file, 'MEC-23-0962_FullData' includes the full dataset of 5498 estimates and associated data. The second file, 'MEC-23-0962_NonReplicated' includes a subset of the data, with spatial and temporal replication removed. In both files, each row signifies a unique estimate of Ne or Nb. Details of the columns and what they contain are in the table below:

| **Column** | **Explanation** ...