Rare trees more likely to become extinct

WASHINGTON, Aug. 14 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say rare trees in the Amazon rainforest are more likely to become extinct due to deforestation and road building than are common species.

Researchers at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute said the Amazon basin contains about 40 percent of the world's remaining rainforest.

The researchers estimate the Brazilian Amazon has, or had, 11,210 large tree species, and, of those, 5,308 species are classified as rare. They predict the rare species will suffer between a 37 percent and 50 percent extinction rate, whereas the extinction rate for all trees could be from 20 percent to 33 percent overall.

The research by Stephen Hubbell, Fangliang He, Richard Condit, Luis Borda-de-Agua, and Hans ter Steege appears in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.