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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Biodiversity hotspots: evolutionary origins of biodiversity in wrasses (Halichoeres: Labridae) in the Indo-Pacific and new world tropics.

Halichoeres is a widely distributed coral reef fish genus with high levels of biodiversity in both the Indo-Pacific and New World tropics. This study employed molecular phylogenetic techniques and biogeographic analyses on 1700-1800 bp of mitochondrial CO1, 16s, and 12s to test competing hypotheses regarding the origins of biodiversity in this genus in these two biodiversity hotspots. Analyses indicate that Halichoeres is polyphyletic with distinct New World and Indo-Pacific Ocean components. The Halichoeres in the New World tropics formed a strongly supported clade (99% MP, 100% ML bootstrap values) that diverged 21.2-18.1 mya, suggesting that this lineage may represent a relictual fauna of the ancient Tethys Sea. The closure of the Isthmus of Panama contributed to the creation of Halichoeres biodiversity, but diversification across the Isthmus prior to its closure and within the W. Atlantic after the closure 3.1 mya were also important processes creating biodiversity in the New World tropics. Within the Indonesian Australian Archipelago (IAA) analysis of age vs. geographic distribution supported neither Center of Origin, Center of Accumulation or Center of Overlap hypotheses, and molecular clock estimates indicated that the role of Pleistocene sea level changes in the origins of IAA marine biodiversity may be less important than previously thought. Ancestral distribution reconstructions within the Indo-West Pacific (IWP) clade (99% ML bootstrap value) also failed to support these hypotheses as the reconstructions were highly sensitive to the inclusion of missing taxa. Results suggest plueralistic origins of biodiversity, but that vast amounts of habitat may favor the survival of biodiversity in the IAA biodiversity hotspot.

Animals↗
PubMed2000

Interoperability of biodiversity databases: biodiversity information on every desktop.

Data about biodiversity are either scattered in many databases or reside on paper or other media not amenable to interactive searching. The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) is a framework for facilitating the digitization of biodiversity data and for making interoperable an as-yet-unknown number of biodiversity databases that are distributed around the globe. In concert with other existing efforts, GBIF will catalyze the completion of a Catalog of the Names of Known Organisms and will develop search engines to mine the vast quantities of biodiversity data. It will be an outstanding tool for scientists, natural resource managers, and policy-makers.

Animals↗
PubMed2004

Biodiversity informatics: managing and applying primary biodiversity data.

Recently, advances in information technology and an increased willingness to share primary biodiversity data are enabling unprecedented access to it. By combining presences of species data with electronic cartography via a number of algorithms, estimating niches of species and their areas of distribution becomes feasible at resolutions one to three orders of magnitude higher than it was possible a few years ago. Some examples of the power of that technique are presented. For the method to work, limitations such as lack of high-quality taxonomic determination, precise georeferencing of the data and availability of high-quality and updated taxonomic treatments of the groups must be overcome. These are discussed, together with comments on the potential of these biodiversity informatics techniques not only for fundamental studies but also as a way for developing countries to apply state of the art bioinformatic methods and large quantities of data, in practical ways, to tackle issues of biodiversity management.

Biodiversity↗
PubMed2002

Operationalizing biodiversity for conservation planning.

Biodiversity has acquired such a general meaning that people now find it difficult to pin down a precise sense for planning and policy-making aimed at biodiversity conservation. Because biodiversity is rooted in place, the task of conserving biodiversity should target places for conservation action; and because all places contain biodiversity, but not all places can be targeted for action, places have to be prioritized. What is needed for this is a measure of the extent to which biodiversity varies from place to place. We do not need a precise measure of biodiversity to prioritize places. Relative estimates of similarity or difference can be derived using partial measures, or what have come to be called biodiversity surrogates. Biodiversity surrogates are supposed to stand in for general biodiversity in planning applications. We distinguish between true surrogates, those that might truly stand in for general biodiversity, and estimator surrogates, which have true surrogates as their target variable. For example, species richness has traditionally been the estimator surrogate for the true surrogate, species diversity. But species richness does not capture the differences in composition between places; the essence of biodiversity. Another measure, called complementarity, explicitly captures the differences between places as we iterate the process of place prioritization, starting with an initial place. The relative concept of biodiversity built into the definition of complementarity has the level of precision needed to undertake conservation planning.

Australia↗
PubMed2005

Freshwater biodiversity: importance, threats, status and conservation challenges.

Freshwater biodiversity is the over-riding conservation priority during the International Decade for Action - 'Water for Life' - 2005 to 2015. Fresh water makes up only 0.01% of the World's water and approximately 0.8% of the Earth's surface, yet this tiny fraction of global water supports at least 100000 species out of approximately 1.8 million - almost 6% of all described species. Inland waters and freshwater biodiversity constitute a valuable natural resource, in economic, cultural, aesthetic, scientific and educational terms. Their conservation and management are critical to the interests of all humans, nations and governments. Yet this precious heritage is in crisis. Fresh waters are experiencing declines in biodiversity far greater than those in the most affected terrestrial ecosystems, and if trends in human demands for water remain unaltered and species losses continue at current rates, the opportunity to conserve much of the remaining biodiversity in fresh water will vanish before the 'Water for Life' decade ends in 2015. Why is this so, and what is being done about it? This article explores the special features of freshwater habitats and the biodiversity they support that makes them especially vulnerable to human activities. We document threats to global freshwater biodiversity under five headings: overexploitation; water pollution; flow modification; destruction or degradation of habitat; and invasion by exotic species. Their combined and interacting influences have resulted in population declines and range reduction of freshwater biodiversity worldwide. Conservation of biodiversity is complicated by the landscape position of rivers and wetlands as 'receivers' of land-use effluents, and the problems posed by endemism and thus non-substitutability. In addition, in many parts of the world, fresh water is subject to severe competition among multiple human stakeholders. Protection of freshwater biodiversity is perhaps the ultimate conservation challenge because it is influenced by the upstream drainage network, the surrounding land, the riparian zone, and - in the case of migrating aquatic fauna - downstream reaches. Such prerequisites are hardly ever met. Immediate action is needed where opportunities exist to set aside intact lake and river ecosystems within large protected areas. For most of the global land surface, trade-offs between conservation of freshwater biodiversity and human use of ecosystem goods and services are necessary. We advocate continuing attempts to check species loss but, in many situations, urge adoption of a compromise position of management for biodiversity conservation, ecosystem functioning and resilience, and human livelihoods in order to provide a viable long-term basis for freshwater conservation. Recognition of this need will require adoption of a new paradigm for biodiversity protection and freshwater ecosystem management - one that has been appropriately termed 'reconciliation ecology'.

Animals↗
PubMed1996

Aquatic Biodiversity and the Electric Utility Industry

/ Results from a 1995 survey of utility company biologists indicate that aquatic biodiversity is an emerging and poorly understood issue. As a result, there is some confusion about what aquatic biodiversity actually is, and how we can best conserve it. Only one fourth (24%) of the respondents said their company has a stated environmental policy that addresses biodiversity. Many respondents indicate that over the years they have not specifically managed for biodiversity, but have been doing that through their efforts to assure balanced indigenous populations. While regulations are still the major driver for biological work, an increasing number of companies are involved in voluntary partnerships in managing water resources. Of these voluntary partnerships, 70% have biodiversity as a goal. Biodiversity is becoming an increasingly common subject of study, and a vast majority (75%) of the respondents suggested it should be a goal for utility resource management. Conservation of aquatic biodiversity is a complex task, and to date most aquatic efforts have been directed toward fish and macroinvertebrates. Ecological research and technological development performed by the utility industry have resulted in a number of successful biopreservation and biorestoration success stories. A common theme to preserving or enhancing aquatic biodiversity is preserving aquatic habitat. Increasingly, ecosystem management is touted as the most likely approach to achieve success in preserving aquatic biodiversity. Several utilities are conducting progressive work in implementing ecosystem management. This paper presents the potential interactions between power plants and biodiversity, an overview of aquatic biodiversity preservation efforts within the electric utility industry, more detail on the results of the survey, and recent initiatives in ecosystem management.KEY WORDS: Biodiversity; Ecosystem management; Watershed management; Utilities; Aquatic; Adaptive management

Journal Article↗
PubMed2003

Economic growth, biodiversity loss and conservation effort.

This paper investigates the relationship between economic growth, biodiversity loss and efforts to conserve biodiversity using a combination of panel and cross section data. If economic growth is a cause of biodiversity loss through habitat transformation and other means, then we would expect an inverse relationship. But if higher levels of income are associated with increasing real demand for biodiversity conservation, then investment to protect remaining diversity should grow and the rate of biodiversity loss should slow with growth. Initially, economic growth and biodiversity loss are examined within the framework of the environmental Kuznets hypothesis. Biodiversity is represented by predicted species richness, generated for tropical terrestrial biodiversity using a species-area relationship. The environmental Kuznets hypothesis is investigated with reference to comparison of fixed and random effects models to allow the relationship to vary for each country. It is concluded that an environmental Kuznets curve between income and rates of loss of habitat and species does not exist in this case. The role of conservation effort in addressing environmental problems is examined through state protection of land and the regulation of trade in endangered species, two important means of biodiversity conservation. This analysis shows that the extent of government environmental policy increases with economic development. We argue that, although the data are problematic, the implications of these models is that conservation effort can only ever result in a partial deceleration of biodiversity decline partly because protected areas serve multiple functions and are not necessarily designated to protect biodiversity. Nevertheless institutional and policy response components of the income biodiversity relationship are important but are not well captured through cross-country regression analysis.

Animals↗
PubMed1996

Focusing Biodiversity Research on the Needs of Decision Makers

/ The project on Biodiversity Uncertainties and Research Needs (BURN) ensures the advancement of usable knowledge on biodiversity by obtaining input from decision makers on their priority information needs about biodiversity and then using this input to engage leading scientists in designing policy-relevant research. Decision makers articulated concerns related to four issues: significance of biodiversity; status and trends of biodiversity; management for biodiversity; and the linkage of social, cultural, economic, legal, and biological objectives. Leading natural and social scientists then identified the research required to address the decision makers' needs and determined the probability of success. The diverse group of experts reached consensus on several fundamental issues, helping to clarify the role of biodiversity in land and resource management. The BURN participants identified several features that should be incorporated into policy-relevant research plans and management strategies for biodiversity. Research and assessment efforts should be: multidisciplinary and integrative, participatory with stakeholder involvement, hierarchical (multiple scales), and problem- and region-specific. The activities should be focused regionally within a global perspective. Meta-analysis of existing data is needed on all fronts to assess the state of the science. More specifically, the scientists recommended six priority research areas that should be pursued to address the information needs articulated by decision makers: (1) characterization of biodiversity, (2) environmental valuation, (3) management for sustainability-for humans and the environment (adaptive management), (4) information management strategies, (5) governance and stewardship issues, and (6) communication and outreach. Broad recommendations were developed for each research area to provide direction for research planning and resource management strategies. The results will directly benefit those groups that require biodiversity research to address their needs-whether to develop policy, manage natural resources, or make other decisions affecting biodiversity.KEY WORDS: Biodiversity; Ecosystem management; Ecological stewardship; Sustainable development; Assessment

Journal Article↗
PubMed2006

Quantifying the evidence for biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning and services.

Concern is growing about the consequences of biodiversity loss for ecosystem functioning, for the provision of ecosystem services, and for human well being. Experimental evidence for a relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem process rates is compelling, but the issue remains contentious. Here, we present the first rigorous quantitative assessment of this relationship through meta-analysis of experimental work spanning 50 years to June 2004. We analysed 446 measures of biodiversity effects (252 in grasslands), 319 of which involved primary producer manipulations or measurements. Our analyses show that: biodiversity effects are weaker if biodiversity manipulations are less well controlled; effects of biodiversity change on processes are weaker at the ecosystem compared with the community level and are negative at the population level; productivity-related effects decline with increasing number of trophic links between those elements manipulated and those measured; biodiversity effects on stability measures ('insurance' effects) are not stronger than biodiversity effects on performance measures. For those ecosystem services which could be assessed here, there is clear evidence that biodiversity has positive effects on most. Whilst such patterns should be further confirmed, a precautionary approach to biodiversity management would seem prudent in the meantime.

Biodiversity↗
PubMed2002

The role of trade-offs in biodiversity conservation planning: linking local management, regional planning and global conservation efforts.

Biodiversity conservation planning requires trade-offs, given the realities of limited resources and the competing demands of society. If net benefits for society are important, biodiversity assessment cannot occur without other sectoral factors "on the table". In trade-offs approaches, the biodiversity value of a given area is expressed in terms of the species or other components of biodiversity that it has that are additional to the components protected elsewhere. That "marginal gain" is called the complementarity value of the area. A recent whole-country planning study for Papua New Guinea illustrates the importance of complementarity-based trade-offs in determining priority areas for biodiversity conservation, and for designing economic instruments such as biodiversity levies and offsets. Two international biodiversity programs provide important new opportunities for biodiversity trade-offs taking complementarity into account. Both the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and the Critical Ecosystems or "hotspots" programs can benefit from an explicit framework that incorporates trade-offs, in which a balance is achieved not only by land-use allocation among areas, but also by the crediting of partial protection of biodiversity provided by sympathetic management within areas. For both international programs, our trade-offs framework can provide a natural linkage between local, regional and global planning levels.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Microbial biodiversity: approaches to experimental design and hypothesis testing in primary scientific literature from 1975 to 1999.

Research interest in microbial biodiversity over the past 25 years has increased markedly as microbiologists have become interested in the significance of biodiversity for ecological processes and as the industrial, medical, and agricultural applications of this diversity have evolved. One major challenge for studies of microbial habitats is how to account for the diversity of extremely large and heterogeneous populations with samples that represent only a very small fraction of these populations. This review presents an analysis of the way in which the field of microbial biodiversity has exploited sampling, experimental design, and the process of hypothesis testing to meet this challenge. This review is based on a systematic analysis of 753 publications randomly sampled from the primary scientific literature from 1975 to 1999 concerning the microbial biodiversity of eight habitats related to water, soil, plants, and food. These publications illustrate a dominant and growing interest in questions concerning the effect of specific environmental factors on microbial biodiversity, the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of this biodiversity, and quantitative measures of population structure for most of the habitats covered here. Nevertheless, our analysis reveals that descriptions of sampling strategies or other information concerning the representativeness of the sample are often missing from publications, that there is very limited use of statistical tests of hypotheses, and that only a very few publications report the results of multiple independent tests of hypotheses. Examples are cited of different approaches and constraints to experimental design and hypothesis testing in studies of microbial biodiversity. To prompt a more rigorous approach to unambiguous evaluation of the impact of microbial biodiversity on ecological processes, we present guidelines for reporting information about experimental design, sampling strategies, and analyses of results in publications concerning microbial biodiversity.

Bacteria↗
PubMed2002

Representing biodiversity: data and procedures for identifying priority areas for conservation.

Biodiversity priority areas together should represent the biodiversity of the region they are situated in. To achieve this, biodiversity has to be measured, biodiversity goals have to be set and methods for implementing those goals have to be applied. Each of these steps is discussed. Because it is impossible to measure all of biodiversity, biodiversity surrogates have to be used. Examples are taxa sub-sets, species assemblages and environmental domains. Each of these has different strengths and weaknesses, which are described and evaluated. In real-world priority setting, some combination of these is usually employed. While a desirable goal might be to sample all of biodiversity from genotypes to ecosystems, an achievable goal is to represent, at some agreed level, each of the biodiversity features chosen as surrogates. Explicit systematic procedures for implementing such a goal are described. These procedures use complementarity, a measure of the contribution each area in a region makes to the conservation goal, to estimate irreplaceability and flexibility, measures of the extent to which areas can be substituted for one another in order to take competing land uses into account. Persistence and vulnerability, which also play an important role in the priority setting process, are discussed briefly.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Collateral biodiversity benefits associated with 'free-market' approaches to sustainable land use and forestry activities.

Concern over the ever more rapid and widespread losses of biodiversity has instigated various remedial actions: whether in situ conservation, such as the establishment of protected areas, or ex situ, such as the conservation of germplasm in gene banks. In the past, such activities were funded and managed by the public sector; however, in recent years, public support has declined and this has spawned a growing interest in conservation opportunities that might arise from 'free-market' approaches to sustainable land use and management. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) is the key framework for articulating policies and actions on biodiversity; however, progress in developing suitable economic and market incentives for biodiversity conservation and its sustainable use has been slow, with activities such as bioprospecting and ecotourism making some, albeit limited, headway. Given the United Nations Framework for Climate Change or United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change's (UNFCCC's) high profile within the public and private sectors, there is some potential for using it to help advance CBD objectives and provide the much-needed economic incentives for conservation, through some of the market-based mechanisms presented under the Kyoto Protocol. Significant potential lies in the fact that many 'natural' forests and certain other ecosystems are both major stores of carbon and areas of valuable biodiversity. Thus, any attempt at conserving these areas has the potential to yield both carbon and biodiversity benefits. So far, however, the conservation of natural forests is not included in the Kyoto Protocol's definition of sinks. Instead the creation of sinks - through the establishment of fast-growing monocultures - may well lead to biodiversity losses, especially if partly degraded lands are cleared for this purpose. If real progress is to be made, our understanding of the relationship between land use and biodiversity benefits needs to be improved, and more appropriate proxies for biodiversity need to be developed. At the same time, we need to have a clear understanding of the precise nature of the potential synergies and be more able to identify possible jointaction opportunities that exist between the UNFCCC, the CBD and the Convention on Combating Desertification and other international trade and economic agreements.

Agriculture↗
PubMed1994

Biodiversity: measurement and estimation.

In introducing a series of 11 papers on the measurement and estimation of biodiversity, eight crucial questions are posed: What is 'biodiversity'? Is biodiversity just the number of species in an area? If biodiversity is more than the number of species how can it be measured? Are all species of equal weight? Should biodiversity measures include infraspecific genetic variance? Do some species contribute more than others to the biodiversity of an area? Are there useful indicators of areas where biodiversity is high? And can the extent of biodiversity in taxonomic groups be estimated by extrapolation? In addition, the modern concept of biological diversity is attributed to Elliot R. Norse and his colleagues.

Animals↗
PubMed2000

Global biodiversity scenarios for the year 2100.

Scenarios of changes in biodiversity for the year 2100 can now be developed based on scenarios of changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide, climate, vegetation, and land use and the known sensitivity of biodiversity to these changes. This study identified a ranking of the importance of drivers of change, a ranking of the biomes with respect to expected changes, and the major sources of uncertainties. For terrestrial ecosystems, land-use change probably will have the largest effect, followed by climate change, nitrogen deposition, biotic exchange, and elevated carbon dioxide concentration. For freshwater ecosystems, biotic exchange is much more important. Mediterranean climate and grassland ecosystems likely will experience the greatest proportional change in biodiversity because of the substantial influence of all drivers of biodiversity change. Northern temperate ecosystems are estimated to experience the least biodiversity change because major land-use change has already occurred. Plausible changes in biodiversity in other biomes depend on interactions among the causes of biodiversity change. These interactions represent one of the largest uncertainties in projections of future biodiversity change.

Agriculture↗
PubMed2006

Biodiversity of Saccharomyces yeast strains from grape berries of wine-producing areas using starter commercial yeasts.

The use of commercial wine yeast strains as starters has grown extensively over the past two decades. In this study, a large-scale sampling plan was devised over a period of 3 years in three different vineyards in the south of France, to evaluate autochthonous wine yeast biodiversity in vineyards around wineries where active dry yeasts have been used as fermentation starters for more than 5 years. Seventy-two spontaneous fermentations were completed from a total of 106 grape samples, and 2160 colonies were isolated. Among these, 608 Saccharomyces strains were identified and 104 different chromosomal patterns found. The large majority of these (91) were found as unique patterns, indicating great biodiversity. There were differences in biodiversity according to the vineyard and year, showing that the biodiversity of Saccharomyces strains is influenced by climatic conditions and specific factors associated with the vineyards, such as age and size. Strains that were terroir yeast candidates were not found. The biodiversity of S. cerevisiae strains after harvest was similar to that in the early campaign; moreover, a temporal succession of S. cerevisiae strains is shown. This fact, together with the differences in biodiversity levels verifies that other factors were more important than commercial yeast utilization in the biodiversity of the vineyard.

Biodiversity↗