Selecting priority conservation areas based on zooplankton diversity: the case of Mediterranean wetlands

2014 ◽  
Vol 65 (10) ◽  
pp. 857 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Diego Gilbert ◽  
Inmaculada de Vicente ◽  
Raquel Jiménez-Melero ◽  
Gema Parra ◽  
Francisco Guerrero

A set of Mediterranean wetlands has been studied in order to identify priority areas for conservation using zooplankton assemblages. We also measure the degree of nestedness to determine the best strategy for conservation of zooplankton diversity. The present study was conducted in 29 wetlands located in the south-east of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain). Two complementary approaches were used, cluster analysis and parsimony analysis of endemicity (PAE), with a presence–absence data matrix, in order to group wetlands as a function of zooplankton composition. To select conservation areas, four different criteria were used: species richness; exclusive species occurrences; the number of wetlands in which species appeared; and phylogenetic diversity. The results showed the existence of three different zones (subgroups of wetlands). Using the same method, a significant nestedness among wetlands was also observed independently of the method used to group them. The conservation proposal included 98% of the total species and 41.4% of the studied wetlands. This work confirms that zooplankton assemblages are essential for making wetland conservation decisions and for the identification of areas with connectivity (fluxes of species) in which efforts should be more intense to preserve their biodiversity.

2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 33-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mário Sérgio Sigrist ◽  
Claudio José Barros de Carvalho

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.


Zootaxa ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 4337 (2) ◽  
pp. 223 ◽  
Author(s):  
CRISTIANO DE SANTANA CARVALHO ◽  
NAYLA FÁBIA FERREIRA DO NASCIMENTO ◽  
HELDER F. P. DE ARAUJO

Rivers as barriers to dispersal and past forest refugia are two of the hypotheses proposed to explain the patterns of biodiversity in the Atlantic Forest. It has recently been shown that possible past refugia correspond to bioclimatically different regions, so we tested whether patterns of shared distribution of bird taxa in the Atlantic Forest are 1) limited by the Doce and São Francisco rivers or 2) associated with the bioclimatically different southern and northeastern regions. We catalogued lists of forest birds from 45 locations, 36 in the Atlantic forest and nine in Amazon, and used parsimony analysis of endemicity to identify groups of shared taxa. We also compared differences between these groups by permutational multivariate analysis of variance and identified the species that best supported the resulting groups. The results showed that the distribution of forest birds is divided into two main regions in the Atlantic Forest, the first with more southern localities and the second with northeastern localities. This distributional pattern is not delimited by riverbanks, but it may be associated with bioclimatic units, surrogated by altitude, that maintain current environmental differences between two main regions on Atlantic Forest and may be related to phylogenetic histories of taxa supporting the two groups. 


2002 ◽  
Vol 24 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 167-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torsten Mattfeldt ◽  
Hubertus Wolter ◽  
Danilo Trijic ◽  
Hans‐Werner Gottfried ◽  
Hans A. Kestler

Comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) is an established genetic method which enables a genome‐wide survey of chromosomal imbalances. For each chromosome region, one obtains the information whether there is a loss or gain of genetic material, or whether there is no change at that place. Therefore, large amounts of data quickly accumulate which must be put into a logical order. Cluster analysis can be used to assign individual cases (samples) to different clusters of cases, which are similar and where each cluster may be related to a different tumour biology. Another approach consists in a clustering of chromosomal regions by rewriting the original data matrix, where the cases are written as rows and the chromosomal regions as columns, in a transposed form. In this paper we applied hierarchical cluster analysis as well as two implementations of self‐organizing feature maps as classical and neuronal tools for cluster analysis of CGH data from prostatic carcinomas to such transposed data sets. Self‐organizing maps are artificial neural networks with the capability to form clusters on the basis of an unsupervised learning rule. We studied a group of 48 cases of incidental carcinomas, a tumour category which has not been evaluated by CGH before. In addition we studied a group of 50 cases of pT2N0‐tumours and a group of 20 pT3N0‐carcinomas. The results show in all case groups three clusters of chromosomal regions, which are (i) normal or minimally affected by losses and gains, (ii) regions with many losses and few gains and (iii) regions with many gains and few losses. Moreover, for the pT2N0‐ and pT3N0‐groups, it could be shown that the regions 6q, 8p and 13q lay all on the same cluster (associated with losses), and that the regions 9q and 20q belonged to the same cluster (associated with gains). For the incidental cancers such clear correlations could not be demonstrated.


2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
IGOR GRICHANOV ◽  
MARIYA CHURSINA ◽  
MENGQING WANG

The dolichopodid fauna of continental Chinese and Russian regions belonging to the East Palaearctic have been selected for a comparative diversity investigation. We gathered information about 654 species of long-legged flies in the studied areas. Regarding the total species number, Primorsky Kray and Republic of Sakha in Russia, Henan and Shaanxi in China, as well as Mongolia are the top five regions, each with more than 100 species known. Cluster analysis of the dolichopodid genera composition allows us to divide all studied territories into two groups: Group A is mixed, since it includes both the Russian regions and the Chinese provinces; Group B includes only Russian regions. Generally, the mathematical analysis of the dolichopodid species supports the uniqueness of Primorsky Kray as the biodiversity center in East Asian Palaearctic. A decrease in the number of known species and biodiversity indices is observed northward, southward and westward of Primorsky Kray. One more possible center is located closely to the Oriental provinces of China (Henan and Shaanxi provinces).


Zootaxa ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 2726 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANCISCO ANTONIO CRESPO ◽  
ALEJANDRA DEL CARMEN VALVERDE ◽  
MONICA SANDRA IGLESIAS

An updated catalogue is given of the cockroach species recorded in Argentina. It includes a list of species, their distribution in the different provinces of the country, the institutions in which the type specimens are deposited, and an updated list of references. The results indicate 87 (plus 2 incertae sedis) species, included in 4 families, 12 subfamilies and 40 currently recognized genera. A few species are widely spread across the country, but 35% (29 + 2 incertae sedis) are only known to occur in Argentina. The biotic affinities of the biogeographic provinces were studied. The data analysis corresponds with the major areas of influence: the Neotropical and Andean regions. A parsimony analysis of endemicity (PAE) was performed. The Parana Forest, Pampa and Chaco biogeographic provinces are supported by numerous endemic species. The families Blaberidae, Blattellidae and Phyllodromiidae include 90% of the species. The cockroach fauna from Argentina is still poorly known and the number of species undoubtedly is higher. The primary homonym of Chorisoneura minuta Rocha e Silva & Aguiar, 1977 was replaced with Chorisoneura rochaesilvae nom. n.


Zootaxa ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2743 (1) ◽  
pp. 56 ◽  
Author(s):  
PEKKA VILKAMAA ◽  
HEIKKI HIPPA

Phylogeny of the Oriental genus Pnyxiopalpus Vilkamaa & Hippa, 1999 was re-studied in the light of the recently described, putatively related genus Vulagisciara Evenhuis, 2007, from Fiji, and a new species of Pnyxiopalpus, P. persimplex sp. n. from Selangor, Malaysia. Characters of these taxa were added to a previously published data matrix . The parsimony analysis yields two most parsimonious cladograms. In the strict concensus cladogram, Vulagisciara appears as the sister group of a monophyletic Pnyxiopalpus. Pnyxiopalpus persimplex sp. n. is described. The new species shares the basic structure of Pnyxiopalpus, but lacks some of the unique morphological modifications present in congeneric species. P. persimplex appears as the sister species to P. simplex, these two species together appearing as the sister group to all other Pnyxiopalpus.


2014 ◽  
Vol 672-674 ◽  
pp. 2041-2047
Author(s):  
Kai Ma ◽  
Chun Chao Hu ◽  
Shan Qiang Feng ◽  
Shu Feng Tan ◽  
Xu Jiang ◽  
...  

This paper investigates the application of systematic cluster, one of the cluster analysis methods, in the IED switch online condition monitoring. So far, problems still exsit in the IED switch online condition monitoring based on the control system of smart substation. In order to figure out a relatively stable online model and make classification from the online information of IED switch, this paper firstly fliters and preprocesses the online condition information of IED switch, and uses data matrix to describe the online condition of IED switch. Based on this, the paper inroduces a special dissimilarity degree formula to transfer the data matrix into dissimilarity degree matrix, and conducts analysis with clustering pedigree chart out of systematic cluster algorithm. Finally, the paper verifies the feasibility of systematic cluster in the IED switch online condition monitoring.


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