Capturing biodiversity: selecting priority areas for conservation using different criteria

Abstract

Abstract. International treaties call for the protection of biodiversity in all its manifestations, including ecosystem and species diversities. The selection of most priority area networks focuses, however, primarily on species richness and occurrence. The effectiveness of this approach in capturing higher order manifestations of biodiversity, that is ecosystem and environmental diversity patterns, remains poorly understood. Using a case study of birds and environmental data from South Africa and Lesotho, we test how complementary networks that maximise species diversity perform with regard to their representation of ecosystem and environmental diversity, and vice versa. We compare these results to the performance of the existing reserve network. We conclude that focusing on any single biodiversity component alone is insufficient to protect other components. We offer explanations for this in terms of the autocorrelation of species diversity in environmental space.

Diversidade de Anuros (Amphibia) na reserva extrativista Lago do Cedro e seu entorno, Aruanã, Goiás

“…Sem uma base sólida de informações básicas, como listas de ocorrências de espécies, não é possível formular teorias mais completas sobre padrões de comunidades, o que limita o planejamento para conservação de espécies (Brito 2010, Trindade-Filho et al 2012. Mesmo a utilização de substitutos ambientais da biodiversidade, como forma de contornar os "gargalos" Lineanos e Wallaceanos (e.g., uso de ecorregiões, Olson & Dinerstein (2002); uso de indicadores de diversidade estrutural, Bonn & Gaston 2005), não eliminam totalmente estas deficiências, uma vez que estas abordagens não são capazes de fornecer informações detalhadas sobre a composição das comunidades e são determinadas em função da maneira como o homem percebe as diferenças do ambiente e não em função das espécies-alvos dos esforços de conservação (Brooks et al 2004a, Ferrier et al 2004). Assim, a intensificação de estudos de campo é a melhor estratégia para se preencher as lacunas de informações da biodiversidade (Brooks et al 2004b).…”

Effects of Disturbance on Sandy Coastal Ecosystems of N-Adriatic Coasts (Italy)

“…This approach has become so overriding, that ecosystems evaluation is commonly based on the proportion of the threatened or endemic species pool that they encompass (Bonn & Gaston, 2005). Much less advancement has been made in building up an adequate insight into structural and functional diversity and in developing sound methods for assessing threats to habitats and ecosystems.…”

Structure of endemic fish assemblages in the upper Yangtze River Basin

“…A network of conservation units (reserves), rather than a single reserve would improve biodiversity in all its manifestations (Bonn and Gaston, 2005). Therefore, in view of the different endemic fish assemblages (with multiple habitats and different fish compositions) in the upper Yangtze River, different reserves aimed at different conservation objectives should be set up in order to preserve fish diversity.…”