An important biological challenge today is the conservation of biodiversity. Biogeography, the study of the distribution patterns of organisms, is an important tool for this challenge. Endemism, the co-occurrence of several species unique to the same area, has important implications for the preservation of biodiversity, since many areas of endemism are also areas with large human impact. More rigorously defined, areas of endemism are historical units of distributional congruence of monophyletic taxa. These areas often assumed to be due to nonrandom historical events that favored conditions associated with high rates of speciation. Thus, understanding endemism and the delimitation of endemic areas has important implications for conservation. Today, most studies delimit areas of endemism by superimposing maps of distribution for various species. This approach suffers from arbitrary delimitations, however, when a great distributional data is used. In this paper we used the method of Parsimony Analysis of Endemicity (PAE) based on georeferenced quadrats in order to delimit areas of endemism. This modality of the method is important due to its testable nature and can also be used to infer area relationships. We applied the method to raw distributional data from 19 unrelated taxa to delimit general patterns of endemism in the Neotropical Region and in the Atlantic forest domain using different grid scales. Neotropical areas found are comprised over the Panama region, northern Andean region and the Atlantic forest. Atlantic forest showed a major division into two distinct components (northern x southern). Endemic areas delimited using smaller scale grids on the Atlantic forest should be considered for conservation priorities once they showed endemism at regional and local scales. The results were also compared to other studies using different taxa and methods. Finally, some considerations on the analysis scale and future perspectives of the method are presented.
Areas of endemism are the smallest units of biogeographical analysis. One of its definitions is that these areas harbor organisms with restricted distributions caused by non random historical factors. The aim of this study was to examine historical relationships among areas of endemism in the Neotropics using Brooks Parsimony Analysis (BPA). We applied BPA to 12 unrelated taxa distributed within two sets of endemic areas in order to: (1) compare the proposed endemic area classifications; (2) examine whether Amazonia and Atlantic Forest are true biogeographic units and, (3) examine whether the inclusion of open area formations influence area relationships of the surrounding forests. General area cladograms revealed a basal split between Amazonian and Atlantic forests, suggesting that these areas have been isolated for a long period of time. All Atlantic forest endemic areas formed a monophyletic cluster, showing a sequence of vicariant events from north to south. The hypothesis that Amazonia is a composite area, made up of different historical units, is herein corroborated. When Cerrado and Caatinga (grasslands and savannas) are included, internal area relationships within Amazonia change, indicating that area classification schemes comprising forests and open formations should be preferred given the complementary history of these areas.
Curcuma longa L. is a sterile, triploid, vegetatively-propagated crop cultivated mainly in Southeast Asia. When dried rhizomes are ground, the resulting yellow powder is used by the food industry as a natural food dye. Moreover, many pharmacological compounds have broadened the commercial application of the crop. However, conventional breeding is difficult and hence, improvement has been limited to germplasm selection. To better utilize the germplasm collections and facilitate genotype selection, a total of 17 polymorphic microsatellite loci were developed using a CT/GT/CTT enriched genomic library. All microsatellites resulted in amplified PCR products, showing a banding pattern of 2-11 polymorphic bands per locus, enabling genotype discrimination. These results can be used in further studies aimed at characterizing C. longa genetic resource collections and also to improve breeding strategies.
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