The IUCN Red List of threatened species is recognised as the accepted standard for species global extinction risk worldwide, and the criteria led down for evaluation are considered as one of the best methods to evaluate extinction risk of species at the global and regional levels.The IUCN’s Red List categories are given more emphasis in determining the conservation status of species and for prioritizing conservation strategies upon these threatened species. The guidelines for evaluation are laid down comprehensively to minimize errors and to maintain consistency of Red List assessments across taxa. However in some cases, it seems that the assessments based on current IUCN criteria do not accurately reflect the real extinction risk of some taxonomic groups. This is not owing to the quality or quantity of the data produced, but rather to some methodological artifacts that affects certain groups of taxa. In this paper we discuss such an event considering an aquatic plant group; genus Aponogeton; from Sri Lanka. All the known Sri Lankan Aponogeton species have been evaluated under the Criteria B adhering to the given IUCN guidelines and the results suggest that such smaller aquatic plants with high habitat specificity are at a disadvantage when securing their conservation statuses, and thereby lose the protection they deserve through legislations. This study emphasises the obligation of much comprehensive evaluation criteria to estimate the AOO in different plant categories.

中文翻译：

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IUCN列入红色清单的“标准B”是否对较小的水生植物有道理？斯里兰卡Aponogetons的个案研究

IUCN濒危物种红色名录被公认为全球范围内物种全球灭绝风险的公认标准，而导致评估的标​​准被认为是在全球和区域层面评估物种灭绝风险的最佳方法之一。红色清单类别在确定物种的保护状况以及优先考虑这些受威胁物种的保护策略时更加重视。全面制定了评估指南，以最大程度地减少错误并保持整个分类单元中红色清单评估的一致性。但是，在某些情况下，似乎根据当前的IUCN标准进行的评估不能准确反映某些生物分类群的实际灭绝风险。这不是由于产生的数据的质量或数量，而是影响某些影响某些类群的方法学因素。在本文中，我们讨论了考虑水生植物群的此类事件。属浮游生物; 来自斯里兰卡。遵循给定的IUCN准则，已根据标准B对所有已知的斯里兰卡浮游动物物种进行了评估，结果表明，这种具有较高栖息地特异性的小型水生植物在确保其保护状态时处于不利地位，从而失去了应有的保护通过立法。这项研究强调必须有很多综合评估标准来估算不同植物类别中的AOO。