High risk of extinction across the flowering plant tree of life

Global biodiversity policies recognize the necessity to preserve
evolutionary lineages as their diversity underpins current and future
benefits to people and the future of life on earth. Plants are mostly
absent from global biodiversity assessments resulting in a taxonomic
imbalance that has undermined their conservation for decades. We present a
tree of life and extinction risk estimates for all species of angiosperms,
representing a global assessment of their threatened evolutionary history.
We estimate that 21.2 % of angiosperm evolutionary history is at risk of
extinction and identify 9,945 priority species that disproportionately
account for total threatened evolutionary history. These prioritizations
serve to redress imbalances between plants and animals, monitor
conservation effectiveness, and optimize resource allocation in the face
of increasing human pressures on biodiversity.

全球生物多样性政策均明确了保护演化支（evolutionary lineages）的必要性：演化支的多样性是当前及未来人类福祉与地球生命存续未来的核心支撑。
当前全球生物多样性评估大多未覆盖植物类群，由此形成的分类学失衡已持续数十年掣肘植物保护工作。
我们构建了涵盖所有被子植物（angiosperms）物种的生命之树，并完成了全物种灭绝风险评估，以此实现对被子植物受威胁演化历史的全球性系统性评估。
经测算，21.2%的被子植物演化历史面临灭绝风险；同时我们筛选出9945个优先保护物种，这些物种所承载的受威胁演化历史占总量的比例远超其自身占比。
该优先保护物种名录可用于纠正动植物间的保护失衡、监测保护工作成效，并在人类对生物多样性的压力持续加剧的背景下优化资源配置。