Assessing extinction risk from geographic distribution data in Neotropical freshwater fishes

Abstract

The IUCN Red List (RL) provides high-quality conservation assessments for individual species, yet the rate and scale of environmental deterioration globally challenges the conservation community to develop expedited methods for risk assessment. Here we compare threat assessments for 3,001 species of Neotropical freshwater fishes (NFF) in the IUCN–RL using readily accessible data types as proxies for extinction risk: geographic range, elevation, and species publication date. Furthermore, using geographic and taxonomic data alone, we generated preliminary conservation assessments for 2,334 NFF species currently awaiting IUCN assessment, identifying an additional 671 NFF species as potentially threatened. This number of potentially threatened species represents an increase of 59% over the number of species currently assigned to threat categories by the IUCN–RL. These results substantially expand the number of threatened NFF species from 422 currently on the IUCN RL to 1,093 species as threatened or potentially threatened, representing about 18% of all NFF species. Extinction risk is greater in species with smaller geographic ranges, which inhabit upland rivers, and which were described more recently. We propose the Central and Southern Andes, and Eastern Guiana Shield as priorities in the upcoming IUCN RL assessment of NFF species conservation risk.

Landscape dynamics and diversification of the megadiverse South American freshwater fish fauna

“…Additional studies addressing this topic have also concluded that modern taxonomic and geographic datasets of South American fishes are now sufficiently robust against the vagaries of taxonomic practice to conduct faunal-scale assessments of biodiversity and conservation (e.g., refs. 90 – 93 ).…”

Ichthyofauna of Santa Helena Relevant Ecological Interest Area (REIA), Paraná, Brazil

“…The diversity of neotropical freshwater fish species mainly comprises three ostariophysan (Characiformes, Siluriformes and Gymnotiformes) and two Acanthomorpha (Cichliformes, Cyprinodontiformes) fish orders (Tagliacollo et al 2021) -all the orders were recorded in the current study. Characiformes and Siluriformes presented the highest species richness.…”

Reproductive biology of the Amazonian amphibian fish the splash tetra Copella arnoldi with emphasis to histological characterization

“…However, the increasing anthropogenic threats in this environment, such as the constant logging, and the catastrophic predictions of the global climate changes for a near future (IPCC, 2021), make the knowledge about the reproductive biology of fish species an urgent matter, in special those whose basic biology are poorly studied. Tagliacollo et al (2021) show the number of threatened Neotropical freshwater fish species increased in 59%, emphasizing the need for such type of studies.…”