Rapid Least Concern: towards automating Red List assessments

Abstract Background The IUCN Red List of Threatened SpeciesTM (hereafter the Red List) is an important global resource for conservation that supports conservation planning, safeguarding critical habitat and monitoring biodiversity change (Rodrigues et al. 2006). However, a major shortcoming of the Red List is that most of the world's described species have not yet been assessed and published on the Red List (Bachman et al. 2019Eisenhauer et al. 2019). Conservation efforts can be better supported if the Red List is expanded to achieve greater coverage of mega-diverse groups of organisms such as plants, fungi and invertebrates. There is, therefore, an urgent need to speed up the Red List assessment and documentation workflow. One reason for this lack of species coverage is that a manual and relatively time-consuming procedure is usually employed to assess and document species. A recent update of Red List documentation standards (IUCN 2013) reduced the data requirements for publishing non-threatened or 'Least Concern' species on the Red List. The majority of the required fields for Least Concern plant species can be found in existing open-access data sources or can be easily calculated. There is an opportunity to consolidate these data and analyses into a simple application to fast-track the publication of Least Concern assessments for plants. There could be as many as 250,000 species of plants (60%) likely to be categorised as Least Concern (Bachman et al. 2019), for which automatically generated assessments could considerably reduce the outlay of time and valuable resources for Red Listing, allowing attention and resources to be dedicated to the assessment of those species most likely to be threatened. New information We present a web application, Rapid Least Concern, that addresses the challenge of accelerating the generation and documentation of Least Concern Red List assessments. Rapid Least Concern utilises open-source datasets, such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Plants of the World Online (POWO) through a simple web interface. Initially, the application is intended for use on plants, but it could be extended to other groups, depending on the availability of equivalent datasets for these groups. Rapid Least Concern users can assess a single species or upload a list of species that are assessed in a batch operation. The batch operation can either utilise georeferenced occurrence data from GBIF or occurrence data provided by the user. The output includes a series of CSV files and a point map file that meet the minimum data requirements for a Least Concern Red List assessment (IUCN 2013). The CSV files are compliant with the IUCN Red List SIS Connect system that transfers the data files to the IUCN database and, pending quality control checks and review, publication on the Red List. We outline the knowledge gap this application aims to fill and describe how the application works. We demonstrate a use-case for Rapid Least Concern as part of an ongoing initiative to complete a global Red List assessment of all native species for the United Kingdom Overseas Territory of Bermuda.


What is Rapid Least Concern?
Harnessing open-source data provided by GBIF -the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and Plants of the World (POWO), Rapid Least Concern carries out analysis of plant distributions to determine if they are likely to be threatened or not. For now, the threatened species will require further attention before publication on the Red List , but the non-threatened species require considerably less documentation and can be automatically generated. Rapid Least Concern provides both the analysis to determine if threat is likely and for the non-threatened species, also allows users to download the data in a format compliant with the IUCN Red List.

Why create Rapid Least Concern?
Quite simply, we want to speed up the rate at which assessments are generated for the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. To date, only ~9% of plants have been assessed and ~250,000 species are estimated to be in the Least Concern category. A workflow developed for the Global Tree Assessment has proven that automation is possible and large volumes of Least Concern assessments of trees are already being transferred to the Red List. However, there are many more species to assess and there were no freely avaiable tools that apply a similar automation procedure. The develpment of Rapid Least Concern will speed up the process of documenting the un-assessed Least Concern plants will make a major contribution to the Red List and will mean that valuable assessor resources can be targeted towards assessing species most likely to be threatened.

Get involved:
You can help us improve Rapid Least Concern by letting us know of any bugs or by suggesting new features here:

How to use:
There are two options for generating LC assessments: Single and Batch. The single option first tests whether your species is likley to be Least Concern, and then allows you to download the data files needed to support publication of the assessment on the Red List. The batch option runs in the same way as the single, but allows users to process multiple species at the same time by uploading a csv. file with a list of names. You may also have a list of names with clean point data already associated with the names -in this case the batch process will run by using your points rather than searching GBIF for occurrence records.

Single
Try the quick start demo first: Step 1 -Enter a binomial (Genus species) into the 'Enter a species' search box. A table of results will appear in the main panel to the right. The results are from a search of the binomial against the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) names backbone. The best matches are listed in order of confidence. The scientificName field includes the author and can be used to make sure you find the species you are looking for. Select a species from the table by clicking on a row, the row will be highlighted in blue. A match is then made to the Plants of the World (POWO) names backbone. Both the GBIF and POWO identifiers are reported in the left side bar. If there is no matching POWO identifier, the analysis cannot proceed.

Search results for Aloe zebrina
Step 2 -Set parameters A limit can be set to the number of occurrence records to be downloaded from GBIF. The value can be set with the slider widget. We allow a maximum of 10,000 occurrence points, a minimum of 1,000 and the default is set at 3,000.

Set the maximum limit for GBIF occurrences
Step 3 Click the Run Analysis button. The first output is a map of the georeferenced occurrence points derived from GBIF (green circle markers), and the native range according to Plants of the World Online using the TDWG geographic distribution system (red polygons). The points and native range layers can be turned on or off and the nonnative points can be hidden. Note that non-native points are not used in the analysis.

Distribution of Aloe zebrina
Statistics

SIS Tables and point file
Below the statistics table and gauges are a series of tables that provide the minimum information required to support a Least Concern Red List assessment.
The first tab shows the occurrence point

Download SIS connect files and point file
Click the Clear form button if you wish to reset the analysis Additional data There are additional fields that can be entered e.g. habitat and plant growth form as well as assessor information. However, these fields can also be entered directly into the SIS database. Use the multiple select options from the sidebar on the left to pick the relevant habitat and growth form.

Enter additional data
For many species, the plant growth form can be found by querying the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families. The results show how many species were searched, how many names could not be matched, how many names matched to synonyms. Any names not matched, or matched to synonyms are highlighted in red and ommited from further calculations.
2 As with the single option, a limit can be set to the number of occurrence records to be downloaded from GBIF. The value can be set with the slider widget. We allow a maximum of 10,000 occurrence points, a minimum of 1,000 and the default is set at 3,000.
3 Click the Run Analysis! button to generate the raw statistics. As with the single process, the results contain the original search results fields (IPNI identifier, author, accepted status and name_in) and several metrics relating to geographic range size.
In contrast to the single process, the batch process allows the user to adjust the thresholds to determine Least Concern using the slider widgets. Species that meet or exceed the LC thresholds are highlighted in green.

Results of analysis
Below the table is a list of how many species were considered for the analysis and how many warnings there were i.e. species that could not be processed. Finally, the number of LC species identified is reported.