For the world’s wildlife, no news may be bad news

Many species are too “data deficient” to receive a full assessment, raising questions about what their conservation status ought to be. Even some commonly known species are underassessed, and researchers believe that suggests they could be in trouble. Writing in Communications Biology, researchers looked at 7,699 underassessed species and estimated that over half may be at risk of extinction. Amphibians faced the greatest threat.

The state of nature “could be worse than we realize if these predictions are true,” author Jan Borgelt, an ecologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, told the Guardian.

Read more from the Guardian.