We are currently developing a new mini-series of explainers in the journal. These explainers offer a 2-page (main body text)  explanation of ambiguous terms used in extinction research. The premise is to build a collection of these explainers and collate brief summaries into a large glossary that can be used as a useful reference in extinction research.

This series is led by a Senior Editor of the journal, Dr David Roberts, The Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, UK, and the Editors-in-Chief Professor Barry Brook, University of Tasmania, Australia, and Associate Professor John Alroy, University of Tasmania and Macquarie University, Australia.

Explainers with agreed authors:

Explainer: Stochastic extinction
Explainer: Societal Extinction (of species)
Explainer: Functional extinction
Explainer: Extaille
Explainer: Dark extinction
Explainer: Extinction vortex
Explainer: Lazarus taxa
Explainer: Time to extinction
Explainer: Extinct (EX)/Extinct in the Wild (EW)/Critically Endangered (Possibly Extinct) (CR(PE)) – i.e. the IUCN Red List Criteria & Categories
Explainer: Signor-Lipps
Explainers: The Sixth mass Extinction — A Contemporary Perspective (conservation biologist looking to the past vs present)
Explainers: The Sixth mass Extinction — A Deep-Time Perspective ( from a palaeontologist looking from the past to the present)
Explainer: Defaunation
Explainer: Silent Forest Syndrome/Empty Forest Syndrome
Explainer: Centinelan extinction
Explainer: Shadow diversity 
Explainer: Shifting baseline syndrome
Explainer: Extinction of experience
Explainer: Extinction selectivity

Explainers we are seeking authors for:

Explainer: Anthropogenic Allee effect
Explainer: Background extinction rate
Explainer: Coextinction
Explainer: Commercial extinction
Explainer: De-extinction
Explainer: Dead clade walking
Explainer: Ecosystem collapse 
Explainer: Ecological extinction
Explainer: Elvis Taxa
Explainer: Endling
Explainer: Extinction cascade
Explainer: Extinction debt
Explainer: Extinction filter
Explainer: Extinction horizon
Explainer: Extinction lag
Explainer: Extinction pulse
Explainer: Extinction risk
Explainer: Extinction vulnerability
Explainer: Extinction window
Explainer: Extirpation vs Extinction
Explainer: Ghost lineage
Explainer: Inferred extinction
Explainer: Last appearance datum (LAD)
Explainer: Mass extinction
Explainer: Pseudoextinction
Explainer: Quasi-extinction
Explainer: Relict species
Explainer: Romeo error
Explainer: Secondary extinction
Explainer: Species rediscovery
Explainer: Terminal decline
Explainer: Molecular de-extinction

If you feel we have not considered a term that should be included as an Explainer, please let us know here. You can offer to author this piece or suggest the term only.

Please contact extinction@cambridge.org and Jessica.jones@cambridge.org if you wish to author an extinction explainer so we can ensure the term is not already covered.

There is no submission deadline or closure date; we will continue to build a database of Explainer articles.

Further author instructions will only be provided once an article is approved.