Protecting the world's undiscovered species
New research shows that most of the world's 'missing' or undiscovered species live in regions that have already been identified by scientists as conservation priorities. The study, carried out by researchers from the University of Oxford, the University of Kent, Duke University and Microsoft Research in the United Kingdom and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), suggests that recent conservation efforts have hit their targets and should reduce uncertainty over global conservation priorities. However, the extinction threat for many of the undiscovered species is worse than previously feared. 'We show that the majority of the world's 'missing species' are hiding away on some of the most threatened landscapes in the world,' says Stuart Pimm, one of the study's researchers. 'This considerably increases the number of threatened and endangered species around the world.' With limited resources and accelerating threats to nature, conservation biologists have long sought to identify areas around the world where effective conservation actions could save the most species. Biodiversity hotspots where the most extreme rates of habitat loss can be found as well as unusually high numbers of endemic species are priorities. However, a problem still remains: to date, we don't know anything at all about many of the world's species. 'We know we have an incomplete catalogue of life,' says lead author Lucas Joppa. 'If we don't know how many species there are, or where they live, then how can we prioritise places for conservation? What if the places we ignore now turn out to be those with the most unknown species?' During the study, the researchers created a model that incorporates taxonomic effects over time to estimate how many species of flowering plants, which form the basis of the biodiversity hotspots concept, remain to be discovered in regions around the world. They then compared those estimates with regions currently identified as global conservation priorities and found that the two sets matched up. Six regions that had already been identified by conservation scientists as hotspots - Mexico to Panama, Colombia, Ecuador to Peru, Paraguay and Chile southward, southern Africa, and Australia - were estimated by the models to contain 70 % of all predicted missing species. Only two regions with high estimates of missing species - the region from Angola to Zimbabwe, and the northern Palearctic, which encompasses parts of Europe and Asia - contained no biodiversity hotspots. 'It was a huge relief that those places in which we are already investing our resources are also those which house the majority of the world's undiscovered species,' says David Roberts, one of the researchers from the University of Kent. 'It didn't have to turn out that way!' While showing that conservation action is already directed at the most appropriate places, the study's results bring an increased sense of urgency to the global extinction crisis. The authors stress that results like these make it even more important to effectively conserve large areas of land. The message is clear: although we can't save a species we don't know exists, we can protect the places where we think it might be living.For more information, please visit:Duke University:http://www.duke.edu/
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