A species is expected to be most resilient to environmental change when it occurs across a broad diversity of habitats. However, there is often no visual representation of the past (i.e. prehistoric and historical) context for a species in the range maps published by national and global authorities. Therefore, it is easy to overlook the fact that many species once occupied a broader geographic range, or greater diversity of habitats. Such oversights hinder the effective conservation of species that have become restricted to a subset of their formerly occupied habitats. Here, we quantified the shifted baseline that may underpin some of the ecological misconceptions about species, and developed a rapid assessment method to aid the identification and prioritisation of ‘potential refugee species' (i.e. species that have become restricted to a subset of their formerly occupied niche). The assessment of potential refugee status is different from, but complementary to, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List and Green Status frameworks. Our framework defines a continuum of potential refugee status, which was demonstratable in continent‐scale maps drawn from biogeographic regionalisation. Applying this framework to all native rodent species across the continent of Australia (a group that has suffered several extinctions and notable declines), we found that the risk of ecological misconceptions caused by shifted baselines (i.e. resulting from ‘shifting baseline syndrome') was prevalent. This suggests that in many cases, translocation opportunities that might be avoided because they are perceived as conservation introductions (as defined by the IUCN translocation guidelines), may in fact fall within the indigenous range, and should therefore be considered reasonable reintroductions. Ultimately, our potential refugee assessment framework will help to facilitate the undertaking of ambitious translocations that will build species' resilience to environmental change by resuming their adaptation to habitats across all formerly occupied bioregions.

中文翻译：

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大陆范围内潜在难民物种的识别和优先排序；澳大利亚啮齿动物案例研究


当一个物种出现在广泛多样的栖息地时，预计该物种对环境变化的适应能力最强。然而，在国家和全球当局发布的分布范围图中，通常没有对物种过去（即史前和历史）背景的视觉表示。因此，人们很容易忽视这样一个事实：许多物种曾经占据更广阔的地理范围，或者更多样化的栖息地。这种监督阻碍了对物种的有效保护，这些物种已被限制在其以前居住的栖息地的一个子集内。在这里，我们量化了可能支撑一些关于物种的生态误解的基线变化，并开发了一种快速评估方法，以帮助识别和优先考虑“潜在难民物种”（即已被限制在其先前占据的子集的物种）。利基）。对潜在难民地位的评估不同于国际自然保护联盟 (IUCN) 红色名录和绿色地位框架，但与之互补。我们的框架定义了潜在难民地位的连续体，这可以在根据生物地​​理区域划分绘制的大陆尺度地图中得到证明。将这个框架应用于澳大利亚大陆上的所有本地啮齿动物物种（该群体已遭受多次灭绝和显着下降），我们发现由基线偏移（即“基线偏移综合症”引起）引起的生态误解的风险很普遍。 这表明，在许多情况下，可能因为被视为保护性引入（如 IUCN 易位指南所定义）而避免的易地机会实际上可能属于本地范围内，因此应被视为合理的重新引入。最终，我们潜在的难民评估框架将有助于促进雄心勃勃的易地实施，通过恢复物种对所有以前占领的生物区栖息地的适应，增强物种对环境变化的适应能力。