Human-driven landscape changes are among the main threats to biodiversity. These landscape changes do not immediately lead to species loss but often cause a time-delayed extinction of species, which is called the term “extinction debt”. However, current conservation strategies mainly focused on the present abundance of rare species but ignore the time lag of species abundance decline due to extinction debt following habitat loss.
Orchid species have been reported to bear future local extinction in urban cities. Considering its unique ecological demands and attributes, Orchids are more prone to carry extinction debt than species with a broader niche.
Most empirical studies have explored extinction debts in various ecosystems. However, the factors that influence or mitigate the extinction debt were under-researched. Previous theoretical work has revealed that low aggregated distribution of species shows less extinction debt.
Therefore, identifying the impact of multiple factors on extinction debt, especially species distribution patterns, would help us better understand the mechanism of the magnitude of extinction debt occurring. This study aims to evaluate extinction debt in urban ecosystems and investigate whether the magnitude of extinction debt is mitigated by the distribution patterns of Orchid species, using three endangered Orchid species in the megacity of Tokyo across 109 study sites as a case study to provide conservation strategies and prevent future species loss.