Fig 131 - uploaded by Dick Vane-Wright
Content may be subject to copyright.
Evolution of the Philippines, 10 million years ago. Mr = Mindoro, Pn = Panay, T = Talaud. See further legends of figs. 128-130.
Similar publications
Ceratocampinae (Lepidoptera: Saturniidae) is the second most diverse subfamily of Saturniidae with 300 species described in 30 genera from southern Canada to northern Argentina. Species of this subfamily are widely distributed in Southeast Brazil, with many endemics to the Cerrado, and important as indicators of ecosystem quality. Specimens of Cera...
The Asura/Miltochrista generic complex belongs to Lithosiini (Erebidae, Arctiinae). It is one of the most diverse and taxonomically unresolved groups of this tribe. At present, this generic complex includes about 25 valid genera, as well as several generic/specific taxa of unclear taxonomic status (Holloway 2001, Kirti & Singh 2016, Volynkin 2017,...
Citations
... But efficient reserve networks consist not just of rich sites but of sites that are rather different from one another biotically and that, therefore, exhibit high between-site complementarity (Pressey and Nicholls, 1989;Pressey et al., 1993;Williams, 1998). Hence a full evaluation of the utility of the higher-taxon approach for reserve planning should include a consideration of the degree of cross-level correspondence in patterns of complementarity as well as richness and an assessment of how well entire reserve networks designed using information on genera or families manage to capture species-level diversity (Vane-Wright and Rahardja, 1993;Williams, 1993;Balmford et al., 1996a). One critical limitation is that even those tests that have addressed these other concerns have nearly always targeted relatively species-poor groups such as birds and mammals (Balmford et al., 1996a). ...
The establishment of a strong relationship between species richness and a surrogate index is a critical issue in conservation biology. Such a relationship could provide the basis for the establishment of cost-effective and easy-to-monitor methods for measuring biodiversity, providing an alternative for prioritization of sites for conservation. Both family and genus richness are tested for their ability to predict the number of spider (Araneae) species independent of sampling detection, spatial autocorrelation, area, geographical location and type of habitat. Data from two protected areas of Terai Conservation Area (TCA) were used as a test case. Genus richness is considered to be a good surrogate of species richness, despite some caution being needed regarding comparison of sites with considerably different sampling effort. Genus alone is found to be reliable indicator for ranking sites according to taxa richness or for determining near-minimum sets of sites for conservation. This study recommends surrogacy at this higher taxonomic level as a promising approach for prediction of spider species richness or evaluation and ranking of areas according to conservation importance.
... They have been used most commonly in Australia (Kirkpatrick, 1983; Kirkpatrick & Harwood, 1983; Margules & Nicholls, 1987; Margules et al., 1988; Margules, 1989; Pressey & Nicholls, 1989a Pressey et al., 1990; Kirkpatrick & Brown, 1991 Lewis et al., 1991; Bedward et al., 1992; Nicholls & Margules, 1993; Pressey & Tully, 1994; Pressey & Logan, 1995). The same approach is being increasingly applied elsewhere, for example in South Africa (Rebelo & Siegfried, 1990, 1992 Rebelo, 1994; Freitag et al., 1996; Lombard et al., 1995; Willis et al., 1996), the United States (Ryti, 1992; Church et al., 1996; Csuti et aL, 1996), Norway (Saetersdal et al., 1993), and for world-wide or regional assessments of conservation priority by British scientists (Ackery & Vane-Wright, 1984; Vane-Wright et al., 1991; Mickleburgh et al., 1992; Vane-Wright & Rahardja, 1993; Williams et al., 1991 Williams et al., , 1992 Williams et al., , 1996a Kershaw et al., 1994 Kershaw et al., , 1995). Although not formalized as algorithms, the site selection methods trialled by Thomas and Mallorie (1985) included approaches that maximized the total number of species and the total number of restricted species in a subset of sites. ...
We compared the results of 30 heuristic reserve selection algorithms on the same large data set. Twelve of the algorithms were for presence-absence representation goals, designed to find a set of sites to represent all the land types in the study region at least once. Eighteen algorithms were intended to represent a minimum percentage of the total area of each land type. We varied the rules of the algorithms systematically to find the influence of individual rules or sequences of rules on efficiency of representation. Rankings of the algorithms according to relative numbers or areas of selected sites needed to achieve a specified representation target varied between the full data set and a subset and so appear to be data-dependent. We also ran optimizing algorithms to indicate the degree of suboptimality of the heuristics. For the presence-absence problems, the optimizing algorithms had the advantage of guaranteeing an optimal solution but had much longer running times than the heuristics. They showed that the solutions from good heuristics were 5–10% larger than optimal. The optimizing algorithms failed to solve the proportional area problems, although heuristics solved them quickly. Both heuristics and optimizing algorithms have important roles to play in conservation planning. The choice of method will depend on the size of data sets, the representation goal, the required time for analysis, and the importance of a guaranteed optimal solution.
A number of surrogates have been suggested for predicting relative
levels of biodiversity (typically expressed in terms of species
richness) in areas for which this information is not available. However,
to date there has been little attempt to perform direct and explicit
empirical comparisons of their effectiveness. Here we examine the
relative predictive value of some environmental variables and of the
numbers of higher taxa, using the avifauna of the New World. Numbers of
genera and families are found to have the strongest correlations with
species richness, and to provide the best predictions of the numbers of
species in areas of Central and South America on the basis of data for
North America. Their effectiveness as surrogates may result from the
fact that they themselves represent an alternative currency for
expressing levels of biodiversity.
The extent to which existing conservation reserves cover or represent the different land classes in a region depends on the scale at which those land classes are defined. In a previous review of regional studies we could not separate the influence on reserve coverage from aspects of scale of classification or mapping. In this study we measured the influence of three aspects of scale on the coverage of existing reserves and the area of new reserves required to represent all land classes. The aspects of scale we used were agglomerative (bottom-up) partitioning, divisive (top-down) partitioning, and generalization of the polygons representing discrete map units. The analyses were based on two existing classifications of a large region. One of these was originally produced at two scales of divisive partitioning. We modified the second classification to produce wide differences in the two other aspects of scale. For all aspects of scale the results confirm that existing reserves in the region tend to represent more coarse- than fine-scale classes, but this depends on the criteria used to determine when classes are “represented.” For all aspects of scale, larger total areas of new reserves are needed to represent fine-scale rather than coarse-scale land classes. This trend holds regardless of the minimum proportional area of each land class to be represented but varies with the size of the sites considered reserves. The results reinforce the scale-dependence of assessments of reserve coverage and establish the scale-dependence of assessments of reserve requirements. They also indicate that comparisons of coverage and requirements between regions or in the same region through time must be standardized for type and scale of classification.
One promising shortcut for the rapid identification of key conservation sites is to carry out surveys only down to the level of genera or families, rather than species. However, few studies have examined how well this method performs when the groups of interest are extremely diverse. We conducted a detailed evaluation of the higher-taxon approach for a highly speciose but neglected group, the macromycete fungi. Using existing UK datasets, we found that at both national and local scales, the species richness of areas could be predicted reasonably closely from their genus-level richness. Family- and order-level data were less informative. However, efficient selection of priority areas for conservation hinges on differences between sites in their biota, as well as their absolute richness. In a simple algorithm designed to explore the consequences of using higher-taxon information for reserve selection, data on genera (but not on families or orders) again performed very well: hypothetical genus-based reserve networks typically captured 98–99% of the macromycete species represented when species-level data were used. Information on genera could successfully identify efficient reserve networks for species because of cross-level congruence in how well different sites complemented one another, as well as congruence in macrofungal richness. Further tests of the higher-taxon approach on highly speciose groups are needed, but the cautious use of genus-level surveys may be the most practical way of identifying priority areas for the conservation of megadiverse taxa.
