Biogeography 1

Question 1

Cardoso et al. (2011)

Answer 1

• Impediments to invertebrate conservation
• Ecosystem services unknown to general public
• Policy makers unaware of importance, falsely assume they will be protected by protecting umbrella species
• 4 shortfalls

Question 2

Bini et al. (2006)

Answer 2

• Modeling to account for wallacean and linnean shortfalls in biome in Brazil
• Took into account recently discovered species range, niches and sampling effort and modeling possible undescribed species
• Model suggested moving reserve system farther north

Question 3

Lozier et al. (2009)

Answer 3

• Ecological niche modeling (ENM)

- Modeled Sasquatch to prove bad data can provide good looking results

Question 4

Restrepo et al. (2012)

Answer 4

-Long term ecology shows much greater rate of ecological change since human development

Question 5

Callicot et al. (1999)

Answer 5

• Normative Concepts in Conservation
• Compositional views more apt for preserves, views Homo sapiens as apart from nature
• Functional views more apt fro places where humans inhabit/exploit, views Homo sapiens as a part of nature
• local extinction within functional groups is inevitable and frequent, but adjacent biodiversity reserves ensures that any ecosystem failure will be short lived → compositional and functional views have to work together
• functionalism → embed human economies in the large and more enduring economy of nature

Question 6

Barlow et al. (2012)

Answer 6

• How pristine are tropical forests?
• debates of “naturalness” of little relevance to modern conservation and can detract from other issues facing rain forests
• danger of extrapolating findings from a few well studied sites to entire basin → pre-columbian human influence fascinating to study but of little importance to Amazonian conservation on the whole
• pre-columbian human in Amazonia were spatial → higher around settled areas down to light hunting pressures in remote areas

Question 7

Willis & Birks (2006)

Answer 7

• What is natural?
• paleoecology provides valuable long term data on the dynamics of existing ecosystems
• there are no temporal records spanning more than 50 years in any of the key biodiversity assessments published int eh last 7 years
• increased spatial and temporal resolution of paleoecological data

Question 8

Coffey et al. (2011)

Answer 8

• When is an invasive not?
• Galapagos had 62 vascular plants labeled as “doubtful natives
• paleobotany confirmed 6 of these doubtful natives were actually native
• Most doubtful natives seem to have had declines in the time after human arrival and have had recent population increases

Question 9

Moritz (1994)

Answer 9

• Defining ESU for conservation
• Evolutionarily significant units (ESU)
• Usually defined with mtDNA as it evolves slowly, reciprocal monophyly
• Management Units (MU) even more specific, within and ESU where no reciprocal monophyly but divergent allele frequencies a nuclear or mitochondrial loci
• ensures evolutionary heritage is recognized and protected

Question 10

Kelt & Brown (2000)

Answer 10

• Species as units of analysis
• ESU can’t be distinguished morphologically so not a practical approach
• Most museum specimens and previous studies can’t be assigned to ESU, no comparative studies
• fossil record can’t show phylogenetic species

Question 11

Dillion et al (2005)

Answer 11

• The implications of diverse species concepts for African birds
• Splitting the 1572 biological species resulted in 2098 phylogenetic species. Thus there are 526 more phylogenetic than biological species, which is an increase of 33.5%
• We found only limited differences using these two species concepts, and no new centres of endemism
• In contrast, known areas of high endemism become more complex, while other areas retain very low levels of narrow endemism. Although larger areas are needed to protect all phylogenetic species, these need not be placed in completely new regions, which is positive news for conservation.
• Some gaps could still result from strict adherence to BSC, use sub-species inlegislation

Question 12

Fernandes et al (2012)

Answer 12

• Phylogegography of the chestnut tailed antbird
• Rivers do seem to give rise to speciation
• The data revealed three genetically divergent and monophyletic groups in M. hemimelaena, which can also be distinguished by a combination of morphological and vocal characters
• Species not sufficient to protect all diversity from development

Question 13

Clements (1916)

Answer 13

• Communities as super organisms
• determined by climate and edaphic conditions
• Coined biomes