In this study, we estimate species loss using a spatially explicit mechanistic simulation model to evaluate three important aspects of ecological context: coexistence mechanisms (e.g. species sorting, competition-colonization tradeoffs and neutral dynamics), spatial distribution of environmental conditions, and spatial pattern of habitat loss.
We found that 1) area-based estimates of extinctions (both Species area SAR and endemics area EAR) are sensitive to coexistence mechanisms as well as to the pattern of environmental heterogeneity; 2) there is a strong interaction between coexistence mechanisms and the pattern of habitat loss; 3) SARs always yield higher estimates of species loss than do EARs; and 4) SARs and EARs consistently underestimate the realized species loss.
Our results highlight the need to integrate ecological mechanisms in area-estimates of species loss which ignore the ecological context that shapes species distributions.
