1 SUPPORTING INFORMATION 2 3 The real sixth mass extinction: Biological annihilation signaled by population losses 4 and declines in vertebrates 5 6 Gerardo Ceballos,1* Paul R. Ehrlich,2* Rodolfo Dirzo2 7 8 9 I. DATA ON DECLINING VERTEBRATE SPECIES 10 11 We obtained the list of vertebrates species considered as declining from the 12 International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN). We accessed the IUCN webpage 13 (www.iucn.org; version 2015.3) on March 2016. The complete list of species is shown 14 below. 15 16 II. POPULATION EXTINCTIONS IN MAMMALS 17 The analysis of population extinctions was done in 177 species of mammals occurring 18 in five continents. We analyzed 54 species in Africa, 14 in Asia, 57 in Australia, 15 in 19 Europe, and 35 in America. The historical distribution was gathered from specialized 20 literature (see details in Ceballos and Ehrlich 2002); the current distribution from IUCN 21 (2015). See the historic and present lion (Panthera leo) distribution as an example (SI 22 Figure 1). Historic and current ranges were digitized as GIS polygons and were 23 elaborated in ArcGis 10.1 (ESRI, 2011). For each species we calculated the area of the 24 historical and present distribution (in squared kilometers) in order to estimate the 25 percentage of loss area and the percentage of area where the species are extant. We 26 estimated the number of species occurring historically and in the present in 10376 cells 27 of 100 km2 on the five continents. So we were able to define in each continent 28 percentage of cells that lost the 25%, 50%, 75% or 100% of species and to map these 29 percentages in each continent. 30 31 1 32 Figure 1. Historic (red) and present (blue) lion (Panthera leo) distribution. Note that 33 there is a single population left in Asia. Map from 34 http://brilliantmaps.com/distribution-of-lions/. 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 2 42 IV. LIST OF THE IUCN "DECREASING" SPECIES' WITH THEIR CONSERVATION STATUS 43 CATEGORY. 44 We considered as "Endangered" in our analyses all species in the IUCN (28) Extinct in 45 the wild (EW), Critically endangered (CR), Endangered (EN), Vulnerable (VU), and Near 46 threatened (NT) conservation categories. We considered as of "Low concern" all 47 species in the IUCN (28) Low concern (LC), data deficient (DD), or without data.