Abstract
Biodiversity Hotspots (Hotspots), harboring exceptionally rich small-ranged species, are critical for mitigating biodiversity loss. As priorities for terrestrial conservation, Hotspots increasingly face threats from agriculture, the largest anthropogenic disturbance impacting biodiversity. Yet, the spatial dynamics of agricultural expansion and its impacts on biodiversity, especially small-ranged vertebrates, remain poorly understood. Using site-level observations and satellite imagery, we found that agricultural pressures reduce species richness by 25.8%, total abundance by 12.4%, and rarefied species richness by 8.7% relative to primary vegetation within Hotspots. However, cropland area within Hotspots expanded 12% from 2000–2019, exceeding the global average of 9%. Fine-scale analysis identified 3,483 risk spots (cropland expansion and high small-ranged vertebrate richness, ~1741 Mha); ~1031 Mha of these areas fall outside Protected Areas, particularly in the Atlantic Forest, Indo-Burma, Western Ghats, Sri Lanka, and Sundaland. These results underscore the urgent need for targeted conservation actions to prevent biodiversity loss from agricultural expansion.
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Data availability
All underlying raw model data are publicly available online. Potapov et al’s cropland data are available at https://glad.umd.edu/dataset/croplands; the species richness data can be obtained from https://biodiversitymapping.org/index.php/download; the PREDICTS database can be obtained from https://data.nhm.ac.uk/dataset/the-2016-release-of-the-predicts-database-v1-1 and https://data.nhm.ac.uk/dataset/release-of-data-added-to-the-predicts-database-november-2022; Biodiversity Hotspots’ shapefile is available at https://zenodo.org/records/3261807. Other ancillary datasets are available at https://zenodo.org/records/17790423.
Code availability
All scripts for the data analyses and visualization are available upon request by contacting the corresponding authors.
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Acknowledgements
This research is supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2022YFF0802400). X. Xiao was supported by the research grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation (1911955, 2200310).
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J.D. and C.Y. conceptualized the study; C.Y. performed research, analyzed data, made the visualizations, and wrote the initial draft; C.Y., J.D., C.J., G.Z., X.Z., Y.L., Z.M., K.M., L.Z., R.G., E.E., and X.X. edited the paper.
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Communications Earth & Environment thanks Sajad Noori, Jing Gan and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: Edmond Totin, Martina Grecequet, and Mengjie Wang. A peer review file is available.
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Yang, C., Dong, J., Jenkins, C.N. et al. Identifying conservation priorities in global Biodiversity Hotspots to protect small-ranged vertebrates from agricultural pressure.
Commun Earth Environ (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03099-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-03099-y
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