High risk of extinction across the flowering plant tree of life

Abstract

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 largely 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 flowering plants (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 9945 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.