A. Purvis

Publications257
h-index79
Citations29,525
Highly Influential Citations1,535
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The delayed rise of present-day mammals
TLDR
The results show that the phylogenetic ‘fuses’ leading to the explosion of extant placental orders are not only very much longer than suspected previously, but also challenge the hypothesis that the end-Cretaceous mass extinction event had a major, direct influence on the diversification of today’s mammals.
A composite estimate of primate phylogeny.
  • A. Purvis
  • Biology, Medicine
    Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society…
  • 29 June 1995
TLDR
The composite tree is derived by applying a parsimony algorithm to over a hundred previous estimates, and is well resolved, containing 160 nodes, and will be a useful framework for comparative biologists.
Predicting extinction risk in declining species
TLDR
Using complete phylogenies of contemporary carnivores and primates, the first comparative test is presented showing that high trophic level, low population density, slow life history and small geographical range size are all significantly and independently associated with a high extinction risk in declining species.
PanTHERIA: a species‐level database of life history, ecology, and geography of extant and recently extinct mammals
Analyses of life-history, ecological, and geographic trait differences among species, their causes, correlates, and likely consequences are increasingly important for understanding and conserving…
Building large trees by combining phylogenetic information: a complete phylogeny of the extant Carnivora (Mammalia)
TLDR
A complete phylogeny for all 271 extant species of the Garnivora is derived, providing a ‘consensus’ estimate of carnivore phylogeny and showing that some lineages within the Mustelinae and Canidae contain significantly more species than expected for their age, illustrating the tree's utility for studies of macroevolution.
Selectivity in mammalian extinction risk and threat types: a new measure of phylogenetic signal strength in binary traits.
TLDR
A new measure for phylogenetic signal of binary traits, D, which simulations show gives robust results with data sets of more than 50 species, even when the proportion of threatened species is low, is developed and is concluded to be a useful measure of the strength of phylogenetic pattern in many binary traits.
EARLY BURSTS OF BODY SIZE AND SHAPE EVOLUTION ARE RARE IN COMPARATIVE DATA
TLDR
It is suggested that the classical model of adaptive radiation, where morphological evolution is initially rapid and slows through time, may be rare in comparative data.
Global effects of land use on local terrestrial biodiversity
TLDR
A terrestrial assemblage database of unprecedented geographic and taxonomic coverage is analysed to quantify local biodiversity responses to land use and related changes and shows that in the worst-affected habitats, pressures reduce within-sample species richness by an average of 76.5%, total abundance by 39.5% and rarefaction-based richness by 40.3%.
Nonrandom extinction and the loss of evolutionary history.
TLDR
It is estimated that the prospective extra loss of mammalian evolutionary history alone would be equivalent to losing a monotypic phylum, and the potentially severe implications of the clumped nature of threat for the loss of biodiversity are shown.
A phylogenetic supertree of the bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera)
We present the first estimate of the phylogenetic relationships among all 916 extant and nine recently extinct species of bats (Mammalia: Chiroptera), a group that accounts for almost one‐quarter of…
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