«Current conservation priorities are calculated on the basis of species richness,
endemism [geographical uniqueness] and threats,» said Budd.
Egypt dive sites Red Sea's Marine Protectorates Red Sea formation and
endemism Hurghada Abu Nuhas Sharm El Sheikh Ras Mohammed Thistlegorm Southern Red Sea Brother Islands Daedalus Reef Elphinstone St. John's Reefs
The origin of island
endemism has long been an important topic in biogeography [1 — 4] and has implications for species management and conservation.
Our data suggest that the rapid evolution of unique behavioral and morphological features associated with island
endemism in U. littoralis is the result of close interaction with humans as well as island evolutionary pressures and climate change.
To investigate the mechanisms that generate island
endemism, we studied the origins and evolution of the island fox (Urocyon littoralis; 1 — 3 kg), a diminutive canid endemic to six of California's Channel Islands, and a congener of the gray fox (U. cinereoargenteus; 3 — 7 kg) found throughout mainland North America.
To examine mechanisms for the origins of island
endemism, we present a phylogeographic analysis of whole mitochondrial genomes from the endangered island fox (Urocyon littoralis), endemic to California's Channel Islands, and mainland gray foxes (U. cinereoargenteus).
The mentawai islands are located in the middle of Indian Ocean, approximately 100 miles from Padang, west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, the Mentawai archipelago is a stunning area rich in nature and beautiful beaches that has been ecologically isolated from mainland Sumatra since the mid-Pleistocene period, resulting in high levels of
endemism amongst its indigenous flora and fauna.
Seven places that have become synonymous with exceptional biodiversity and high rates of
endemism, just like the real Galapagos Islands More
Hotspots,
endemism and the conservation of marine biodiversity.
It allows you to do all sorts of stuff about
endemism, suggest new species, how different and how similar things are, without ever knowing the names of species.
Currie refers to velocity and extent as competing explanations, whereas we see them as complementary, based on our expectation that patterns of
endemism in amphibians, mammals, and birds would not be entirely attributable to any one explanatory variable (2, 3).
Finally, if extinctions produced the gradients of
endemism observed in this study, then very large numbers of species would have to have gone extinct since the LGM.
We do not claim that a historical explanation for
endemism patterns should supplant a contemporary one.
Rather, we show that adding a mechanistically based historical predictor greatly improves our ability to explain modern
endemism patterns.
Additionally, extinctions below the species level are documented in this time period (e.g., 7) and, as argued in our Report, may contribute to the observed velocity -
endemism relationship.
Analyses that were restricted to 10 ° x 10 ° regions showed that «high velocity areas within regions were associated with low
endemism.»
In this light, Sandel et al. found that
endemism is more strongly correlated with the area of analogous contemporary climate (r2 = 0.415 - 0.538) than with climate change velocity (r2 = 0.283 - 0.385) for all taxa they studied.
This gives a measure of the indispensability of each predictor variable, and shows that multiple factors, both historical and contemporary, are needed to adequately describe
endemism patterns.
«This is the highest level of
endemism recorded from any marine ecosystem on Earth.»
«We discovered that
endemism — the phenomenon that particular species live only in a rather limited area — is also very common among fungi,» explained Tedersoo.
The 10 richest centers of
endemism cover 15.8 % of the world's coral reefs (0.012 % of the oceans) but include between 44.8 and 54.2 % of the restricted - range species.
Restricted - range species are clustered into centers of
endemism, like those described for terrestrial taxa.
Threatened centers of
endemism are major biodiversity hotspots, and conservation efforts targeted toward them could help avert the loss of tropical reef biodiversity.