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, with a minimum word count of 1,000 words. 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
• Explainer: Species rediscovery
• Explainer: Extinction cascade
• Explainer: Ghost lineage
• Explainer: Quasi-extinction
• Explainer: Dead clade walking
• Explainer: Extinction window
• Explainer: Extirpation vs Extinction
• Explainer: Background extinction rate
• Explainer: Last appearance datum (LAD)
• Explainer: De-extinction
• Explainer: Endling

Explainers we are seeking authors for:

• Explainer: Anthropogenic Allee effect
• Explainer: Coextinction
• Explainer: Commercial extinction
• Explainer: Ecosystem collapse 
• Explainer: Ecological extinction
• Explainer: Elvis Taxa
• Explainer: Extinction debt
• Explainer: Extinction filter
• Explainer: Extinction horizon
• Explainer: Extinction lag
• Explainer: Extinction pulse
• Explainer: Extinction risk
• Explainer: Extinction vulnerability
• Explainer: Inferred extinction
• Explainer: Mass extinction
• Explainer: Pseudoextinction
• Explainer: Relict species
• Explainer: Romeo error
• Explainer: Secondary extinction
• 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.