Species prone to extinction and those at risk of becoming environmental pests will be more easily identified thanks to research at the University of Adelaide.

The study, published by the British Ecological Society's Journal of Ecology, examined the impact of environmental change.

It analysed the life history and ecological traits in more than 8900 species of legumes and found a link between their evolutionary features and their particular susceptibility to becoming threatened or invasive.

"This study provides good evidence that we can take any group and predict how individual species will respond to changes in the environment through events such as climate change or habitat loss," said lead author Professor Corey Bradshaw, from the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

"The urgency and scale of the global biodiversity crisis means we need good generalised predictors of a species' likelihood of going extinct or becoming invasive in non-native areas."

Professor Bradshaw said developing evidence-based rules of thumb for categorising poorly-studied species would also aid decision makers in choosing the best ways to allocate conservation resources.

The research would also allow the list of species that need to be watched to be expanded, he said.