Table 1.
Estimates of Homo sapiens originality rank if currently threatened and near‐threatened species were driven extinct and comparison with random extinctions
| Group | Extinctions | Nb. of species | Originality ranka | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Obs.b | Mean Sim. (SD) | |||
| Mammals | None | 5451 | 1332 | |
| CR | 5138 | 991**c | 1282 (67.54) | |
| EN, CR | 4456 | 158*** | 1161 (123.67) | |
| VU to CR | 3785 | 81*** | 1024 (154.77) | |
| NT to CR | 3373 | 82*** | 931 (169.10) | |
| Primates | None | 435 | 46 | |
| CR | 369 | 32* | 42 (5.02) | |
| EN, CR | 244 | 5*** | 33 (8.08) | |
| VU to CR | 157 | 6* | 24 (8.57) | |
| NT to CR | 131 | 4** | 22 (8.37) | |
aResults here are averaged over all our simulations, which account for missing data (detailed results in Supporting Information Appendix S1). bWe first measured Obs., the observed rank for the originality of H. sapiens, ordering species from the highest to the lowest originality. Next, we drove all critically endangered (CR) species to extinction and performed the same calculation. We compared the observed rank for H. sapiens originality with ranks obtained permuting extinction risks between mammals (200 times) or primates (500 times). The average simulated rank (Sim.) for H. sapiens and its standard deviation (SD) are given. We repeated this approach driving endangered (EN) and CR species, next vulnerable (VU) to CR, and then near threatened (NT) to CR species to extinction. cProportion of times Sim. was lower than or equal to Obs.: *0.01 < p ≤ 0.05, **0.005 < p ≤ 0.01, ***p ≤ 0.005.