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Biodiversity hotspot

A biodiversity hotspot is a biogeographic region with significant levels of biodiversity that is threatened by human habitation.[1][2] Norman Myers wrote about the concept in two articles in The Environmentalist in 1988 [3] and 1990,[4] after which the concept was revised following thorough analysis by Myers and others into “Hotspots: Earth’s Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions”[5] and a paper published in the journal Nature, both in 2000.[6]

To qualify as a biodiversity hotspot on Myers' 2000 edition of the hotspot map, a region must meet two strict criteria: it must contain at least 1,500 species of vascular plants (more than 0.5% of the world's total) as endemics, and it has to have lost at least 70% of its primary vegetation.[6] Globally, 36 zones qualify under this definition.[7] These sites support nearly 60% of the world's plant, bird, mammal, reptile, and amphibian species, with a high share of those species as endemics. Some of these hotspots support up to 15,000 endemic plant species, and some have lost up to 95% of their natural habitat.[7]

Biodiversity hotspots host their diverse ecosystems on just 2.4% of the planet's surface.[2] Ten hotspots were originally identified by Myer;[1] the current 36 used to cover more than 15.7% of all the land but have lost around 85% of their area.[8] This loss of habitat is why approximately 60% of the world's terrestrial life lives on only 2.4% of the land surface area. Caribbean Islands like Haiti and Jamaica are facing serious pressures on the populations of endemic plants and vertebrates as a result of rapid deforestation. Other areas include the Tropical Andes, Philippines, Mesoamerica, and Sundaland, which, under the current levels at which deforestation is occurring, will likely lose most of their plant and vertebrate species.[9]

Hotspot conservation initiatives edit

Only a small percentage of the total land area within biodiversity hotspots is now protected. Several international organizations are working to conserve biodiversity hotspots.

  • Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) is a global program that provides funding and technical assistance to nongovernmental organizations in order to protect the Earth's richest regions of plant and animal diversity, including biodiversity hotspots, high-biodiversity wilderness areas and important marine regions.
  • The World Wide Fund for Nature has devised a system called the "Global 200 Ecoregions", the aim of which is to select priority ecoregions for conservation from fourteen terrestrial, three freshwater, and four marine habitat types. They are chosen for species richness, endemism, taxonomic uniqueness, unusual ecological or evolutionary phenomena, and global rarity. All biodiversity hotspots contain at least one Global 200 Ecoregion.
  • Birdlife International has identified 218 “Endemic Bird Areas” (EBAs) each of which holds two or more bird species found nowhere else. Birdlife International has identified more than 11,000 Important Bird Areas[10] all over the world.
  • Plant life International coordinates programs aiming to identify and manage Important Plant Areas.
  • Alliance for Zero Extinction is an initiative of scientific organizations and conservation groups who co-operate to focus on the most threatened endemic species of the world. They have identified 595 sites, including many Birdlife’s Important Bird Areas.
  • The National Geographic Society has prepared a world map[11] of the hotspots and ArcView shapefile and metadata for the Biodiversity Hotspots[12] including details of the individual endangered fauna in each hotspot, which is available from Conservation International.[13]
  • The Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) seeks to control the destruction of forests in India.

Distribution by region edit

 
Biodiversity hotspots. Original proposal in green, and added regions in blue.[14]

A majority of biodiversity exists within the tropics; likewise, most biodiversity hotspots are within the tropics.[15] Of the 36 biodiversity hotspots, 15 are classified as old, climatically-buffered, infertile landscapes (OCBILs). [16] These areas have been historically isolated from interactions with other climate zones, but recent human interaction and encroachment have put these historically safe hotspots at risk. OCBILs have mainly been threatened by the relocation of indigenous groups and military actions as the infertile ground has previously dissuaded human populations.[17] The conservation of OCBILs within biodiversity hotspots has started to garner attention because current theories believe these sites provide not only high levels of biodiversity, but they have relatively stable lineages and the potential for high levels of speciation in the future. Because these sites are relatively stable, they can be classified as refugia.[18]

North and Central America

The Caribbean

South America

Europe

Africa

Central Asia

South Asia

Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific

East Asia

West Asia

Criticism edit

The high profile of the biodiversity hotspots approach has resulted in some criticism. Papers such as Kareiva & Marvier (2003)[21] have argued that the biodiversity hotspots:

  • Do not adequately represent other forms of species richness (e.g. total species richness or threatened species richness).
  • Do not adequately represent taxa other than vascular plants (e.g. vertebrates and fungi).
  • Do not protect smaller scale richness hotspots.
  • Do not make allowances for changing land use patterns. Hotspots represent regions that have experienced considerable habitat loss, but this does not mean they are experiencing ongoing habitat loss. On the other hand, regions that are relatively intact (e.g. the Amazon basin) have experienced relatively little land loss, but are currently losing habitat at tremendous rates.
  • Do not protect ecosystem services.
  • Do not consider phylogenetic diversity.[22]

A recent series of papers has pointed out that biodiversity hotspots (and many other priority region sets) do not address the concept of cost.[23] The purpose of biodiversity hotspots is not simply to identify regions that are of high biodiversity value, but to prioritize conservation spending. The regions identified include some in the developed world (e.g. the California Floristic Province), alongside others in the developing world (e.g. Madagascar). The cost of land is likely to vary between these regions by an order of magnitude or more, but the biodiversity hotspot designations do not consider the conservation importance of this difference. However, the available resources for conservation also tend to vary in this way.

See also edit

References edit

  1. ^ a b "Biodiversity Hotspots in India". www.bsienvis.nic.in.
  2. ^ a b "Why Hotspots Matter". Conservation International.
  3. ^ Myers, N. (1988). "Threatened biotas: "Hot spots" in tropical forests". Environmentalist. 8 (3): 187–208. Bibcode:1988ThEnv...8..187M. doi:10.1007/BF02240252. PMID 12322582. S2CID 2370659.
  4. ^ Myers, N. The Environmentalist 10 243-256 (1990)
  5. ^ Russell A. Mittermeier, Norman Myers and Cristina Goettsch Mittermeier, Hotspots: Earth's Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions, Conservation International, 2000 ISBN 978-968-6397-58-1
  6. ^ a b Myers, Norman; Mittermeier, Russell A.; Mittermeier, Cristina G.; da Fonseca, Gustavo A. B.; Kent, Jennifer (2000). "Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities" (PDF). Nature. 403 (6772): 853–858. Bibcode:2000Natur.403..853M. doi:10.1038/35002501. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 10706275. S2CID 4414279.
  7. ^ a b "Biodiversity hotspots defined". Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund. Conservation International. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
  8. ^ "Biodiversity Hotspots". www.e-education.psu.edu.
  9. ^ Brooks, Thomas M.; Mittermeier, Russell A.; Mittermeier, Cristina G.; da Fonseca, Gustavo A. B.; Rylands, Anthony B.; Konstant, William R.; Flick, Penny; Pilgrim, John; Oldfield, Sara; Magin, Georgina; Hilton-Taylor, Craig (August 2002). "Habitat Loss and Extinction in the Hotspots of Biodiversity". Conservation Biology. 16 (4): 909–923. Bibcode:2002ConBi..16..909B. doi:10.1046/j.1523-1739.2002.00530.x. ISSN 0888-8892. S2CID 44009934.
  10. ^ [1] August 8, 2007, at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ (PDF). The Biodiversity Hotspots. 2010-10-07. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2012-03-27. Retrieved 2012-06-22.
  12. ^ . The Biodiversity Hotspots. 2010-10-07. Archived from the original on 2012-03-20. Retrieved 2012-06-22.
  13. ^ . Biodiversityhotspots.org. 2010-10-07. Archived from the original on 2012-03-24. Retrieved 2012-06-22.
  14. ^ "Biodiversity Hotspots". GEOG 30N: Environment and Society in a Changing World. John A. Dutton e-Education Institute, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved 3 August 2022.
  15. ^ Harvey, Michael G.; Bravo, Gustavo A.; Claramunt, Santiago; Cuervo, Andrés M.; Derryberry, Graham E.; Battilana, Jaqueline; Seeholzer, Glenn F.; McKay, Jessica Shearer; O’Meara, Brian C.; Faircloth, Brant C.; Edwards, Scott V.; Pérez-Emán, Jorge; Moyle, Robert G.; Sheldon, Frederick H.; Aleixo, Alexandre (2020-12-11). "The evolution of a tropical biodiversity hotspot". Science. 370 (6522): 1343–1348. Bibcode:2020Sci...370.1343H. doi:10.1126/science.aaz6970. hdl:10138/329703. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 33303617. S2CID 228084618.
  16. ^ https://academic.oup.com/biolinnean/article/133/2/266/6118895. Retrieved 2023-03-23. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  17. ^ Hopper, Stephen D.; Silveira, Fernando A. O.; Fiedler, Peggy L. (2016-06-01). "Biodiversity hotspots and Ocbil theory". Plant and Soil. 403 (1): 167–216. Bibcode:2016PlSoi.403..167H. doi:10.1007/s11104-015-2764-2. ISSN 1573-5036. S2CID 254948226.
  18. ^ Hopper, Stephen D. (2009-09-01). "OCBIL theory: towards an integrated understanding of the evolution, ecology and conservation of biodiversity on old, climatically buffered, infertile landscapes". Plant and Soil. 322 (1): 49–86. Bibcode:2009PlSoi.322...49H. doi:10.1007/s11104-009-0068-0. ISSN 1573-5036. S2CID 28155038.
  19. ^ "North American Coastal Plain". Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund. Retrieved 7 February 2019.
  20. ^ Noss, Reed F.; Platt, William J.; Sorrie, Bruce A.; Weakley, Alan S.; Means, D. Bruce; Costanza, Jennifer; Peet, Robert K. (2015). "How global biodiversity hotspots may go unrecognized: lessons from the North American Coastal Plain" (PDF). Diversity and Distributions. 21 (2): 236–244. Bibcode:2015DivDi..21..236N. doi:10.1111/ddi.12278.
  21. ^ Kareiva, Peter; Marvier, Michelle (2003). "Conserving Biodiversity Coldspots: Recent calls to direct conservation funding to the world's biodiversity hotspots may be bad investment advice". American Scientist. 91 (4): 344–351. doi:10.1511/2003.4.344. ISSN 0003-0996. JSTOR 27858246. Retrieved 10 May 2022.
  22. ^ Daru, Barnabas H.; van der Bank, Michelle; Davies, T. Jonathan (2014). "Spatial incongruence among hotspots and complementary areas of tree diversity in southern Africa". Diversity and Distributions. 21 (7): 769–780. doi:10.1111/ddi.12290. S2CID 18417574.
  23. ^ Possingham, Hugh P.; Wilson, Kerrie A. (August 2005). "Turning up the heat on hotspots". Nature. 436 (7053): 919–920. doi:10.1038/436919a. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 16107821. S2CID 4398455.

Further reading edit

  • Dedicated issue of Philosophical Transactions B on Biodiversity Hotspots. Some articles are freely available.
  • Spyros Sfenthourakis, Anastasios Legakis: Hotspots of endemic terrestrial invertebrates in Southern Greece. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001

External links edit

  • A-Z of Areas of Biodiversity Importance: Biodiversity Hotspots
  • African Wild Dog Conservancy's Biodiversity Hotspots Project
  • Biodiversity hotspots in India
  • Shapefile of the Biodiversity Hotspots (v2016.1)

biodiversity, hotspot, biodiversity, hotspot, biogeographic, region, with, significant, levels, biodiversity, that, threatened, human, habitation, norman, myers, wrote, about, concept, articles, environmentalist, 1988, 1990, after, which, concept, revised, fol. A biodiversity hotspot is a biogeographic region with significant levels of biodiversity that is threatened by human habitation 1 2 Norman Myers wrote about the concept in two articles in The Environmentalist in 1988 3 and 1990 4 after which the concept was revised following thorough analysis by Myers and others into Hotspots Earth s Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions 5 and a paper published in the journal Nature both in 2000 6 To qualify as a biodiversity hotspot on Myers 2000 edition of the hotspot map a region must meet two strict criteria it must contain at least 1 500 species of vascular plants more than 0 5 of the world s total as endemics and it has to have lost at least 70 of its primary vegetation 6 Globally 36 zones qualify under this definition 7 These sites support nearly 60 of the world s plant bird mammal reptile and amphibian species with a high share of those species as endemics Some of these hotspots support up to 15 000 endemic plant species and some have lost up to 95 of their natural habitat 7 Biodiversity hotspots host their diverse ecosystems on just 2 4 of the planet s surface 2 Ten hotspots were originally identified by Myer 1 the current 36 used to cover more than 15 7 of all the land but have lost around 85 of their area 8 This loss of habitat is why approximately 60 of the world s terrestrial life lives on only 2 4 of the land surface area Caribbean Islands like Haiti and Jamaica are facing serious pressures on the populations of endemic plants and vertebrates as a result of rapid deforestation Other areas include the Tropical Andes Philippines Mesoamerica and Sundaland which under the current levels at which deforestation is occurring will likely lose most of their plant and vertebrate species 9 Contents 1 Hotspot conservation initiatives 2 Distribution by region 3 Criticism 4 See also 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External linksHotspot conservation initiatives editOnly a small percentage of the total land area within biodiversity hotspots is now protected Several international organizations are working to conserve biodiversity hotspots Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund CEPF is a global program that provides funding and technical assistance to nongovernmental organizations in order to protect the Earth s richest regions of plant and animal diversity including biodiversity hotspots high biodiversity wilderness areas and important marine regions The World Wide Fund for Nature has devised a system called the Global 200 Ecoregions the aim of which is to select priority ecoregions for conservation from fourteen terrestrial three freshwater and four marine habitat types They are chosen for species richness endemism taxonomic uniqueness unusual ecological or evolutionary phenomena and global rarity All biodiversity hotspots contain at least one Global 200 Ecoregion Birdlife International has identified 218 Endemic Bird Areas EBAs each of which holds two or more bird species found nowhere else Birdlife International has identified more than 11 000 Important Bird Areas 10 all over the world Plant life International coordinates programs aiming to identify and manage Important Plant Areas Alliance for Zero Extinction is an initiative of scientific organizations and conservation groups who co operate to focus on the most threatened endemic species of the world They have identified 595 sites including many Birdlife s Important Bird Areas The National Geographic Society has prepared a world map 11 of the hotspots and ArcView shapefile and metadata for the Biodiversity Hotspots 12 including details of the individual endangered fauna in each hotspot which is available from Conservation International 13 The Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority CAMPA seeks to control the destruction of forests in India Distribution by region edit nbsp Biodiversity hotspots Original proposal in green and added regions in blue 14 A majority of biodiversity exists within the tropics likewise most biodiversity hotspots are within the tropics 15 Of the 36 biodiversity hotspots 15 are classified as old climatically buffered infertile landscapes OCBILs 16 These areas have been historically isolated from interactions with other climate zones but recent human interaction and encroachment have put these historically safe hotspots at risk OCBILs have mainly been threatened by the relocation of indigenous groups and military actions as the infertile ground has previously dissuaded human populations 17 The conservation of OCBILs within biodiversity hotspots has started to garner attention because current theories believe these sites provide not only high levels of biodiversity but they have relatively stable lineages and the potential for high levels of speciation in the future Because these sites are relatively stable they can be classified as refugia 18 North and Central America California Floristic Province 8 Madrean pine oak woodlands 26 Mesoamerica 2 North American Coastal Plain 36 19 20 The Caribbean Caribbean Islands 3 South America Atlantic Forest 4 Cerrado 6 Chilean Winter Rainfall Valdivian Forests 7 Tumbes Choco Magdalena 5 Tropical Andes 1 Europe Mediterranean Basin 14 Africa Cape Floristic Region 12 Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa 10 Eastern Afromontane 28 Guinean Forests of West Africa 11 Horn of Africa 29 Madagascar and the Indian Ocean Islands 9 Maputaland Pondoland Albany 27 Succulent Karoo 13 Central Asia Mountains of Central Asia 31 South Asia Eastern Himalaya 32 Indo Burma Bangladesh India and Myanmar 19 Western Ghats and Sri Lanka 21 Southeast Asia and Asia Pacific East Melanesian Islands 34 New Caledonia 23 New Zealand 24 Philippines 18 Polynesia Micronesia 25 Eastern Australian temperate forests 35 Southwest Australia 22 Sundaland Indonesia and Nicobar islands of India 16 Wallacea of Indonesia 17 East Asia Japan 33 Mountains of Southwest China 20 West Asia Caucasus 15 Irano Anatolian 30 Criticism editThe high profile of the biodiversity hotspots approach has resulted in some criticism Papers such as Kareiva amp Marvier 2003 21 have argued that the biodiversity hotspots Do not adequately represent other forms of species richness e g total species richness or threatened species richness Do not adequately represent taxa other than vascular plants e g vertebrates and fungi Do not protect smaller scale richness hotspots Do not make allowances for changing land use patterns Hotspots represent regions that have experienced considerable habitat loss but this does not mean they are experiencing ongoing habitat loss On the other hand regions that are relatively intact e g the Amazon basin have experienced relatively little land loss but are currently losing habitat at tremendous rates Do not protect ecosystem services Do not consider phylogenetic diversity 22 A recent series of papers has pointed out that biodiversity hotspots and many other priority region sets do not address the concept of cost 23 The purpose of biodiversity hotspots is not simply to identify regions that are of high biodiversity value but to prioritize conservation spending The regions identified include some in the developed world e g the California Floristic Province alongside others in the developing world e g Madagascar The cost of land is likely to vary between these regions by an order of magnitude or more but the biodiversity hotspot designations do not consider the conservation importance of this difference However the available resources for conservation also tend to vary in this way See also editBiodiversity Variety and variability of life forms Conservation biology Study of threats to biological diversity Crisis ecoregion Ecoregion Ecologically and geographically defined area that is smaller than a bioregion Global 200 Hawaiian honeycreeper conservation High Biodiversity Wilderness Area Hope spot American marine biologist and lecturerPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets biodiversity hotspots in the open sea Key Biodiversity Area Megadiverse countries Nation with extremely high biological diversity or many endemic species Protected area Areas protected for having ecological or cultural importance Wilderness Undisturbed natural environmentReferences edit a b Biodiversity Hotspots in India www bsienvis nic in a b Why Hotspots Matter Conservation International Myers N 1988 Threatened biotas Hot spots in tropical forests Environmentalist 8 3 187 208 Bibcode 1988ThEnv 8 187M doi 10 1007 BF02240252 PMID 12322582 S2CID 2370659 Myers N The Environmentalist 10 243 256 1990 Russell A Mittermeier Norman Myers and Cristina Goettsch Mittermeier Hotspots Earth s Biologically Richest and Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions Conservation International 2000 ISBN 978 968 6397 58 1 a b Myers Norman Mittermeier Russell A Mittermeier Cristina G da Fonseca Gustavo A B Kent Jennifer 2000 Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities PDF Nature 403 6772 853 858 Bibcode 2000Natur 403 853M doi 10 1038 35002501 ISSN 0028 0836 PMID 10706275 S2CID 4414279 a b Biodiversity hotspots defined Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund Conservation International Retrieved 10 August 2020 Biodiversity Hotspots www e education psu edu Brooks Thomas M Mittermeier Russell A Mittermeier Cristina G da Fonseca Gustavo A B Rylands Anthony B Konstant William R Flick Penny Pilgrim John Oldfield Sara Magin Georgina Hilton Taylor Craig August 2002 Habitat Loss and Extinction in the Hotspots of Biodiversity Conservation Biology 16 4 909 923 Bibcode 2002ConBi 16 909B doi 10 1046 j 1523 1739 2002 00530 x ISSN 0888 8892 S2CID 44009934 1 Archived August 8 2007 at the Wayback Machine Conservation International PDF The Biodiversity Hotspots 2010 10 07 Archived from the original PDF on 2012 03 27 Retrieved 2012 06 22 Conservation International The Biodiversity Hotspots 2010 10 07 Archived from the original on 2012 03 20 Retrieved 2012 06 22 Resources Biodiversityhotspots org 2010 10 07 Archived from the original on 2012 03 24 Retrieved 2012 06 22 Biodiversity Hotspots GEOG 30N Environment and Society in a Changing World John A Dutton e Education Institute College of Earth and Mineral Sciences Pennsylvania State University Retrieved 3 August 2022 Harvey Michael G Bravo Gustavo A Claramunt Santiago Cuervo Andres M Derryberry Graham E Battilana Jaqueline Seeholzer Glenn F McKay Jessica Shearer O Meara Brian C Faircloth Brant C Edwards Scott V Perez Eman Jorge Moyle Robert G Sheldon Frederick H Aleixo Alexandre 2020 12 11 The evolution of a tropical biodiversity hotspot Science 370 6522 1343 1348 Bibcode 2020Sci 370 1343H doi 10 1126 science aaz6970 hdl 10138 329703 ISSN 0036 8075 PMID 33303617 S2CID 228084618 https academic oup com biolinnean article 133 2 266 6118895 Retrieved 2023 03 23 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a Missing or empty title help Hopper Stephen D Silveira Fernando A O Fiedler Peggy L 2016 06 01 Biodiversity hotspots and Ocbil theory Plant and Soil 403 1 167 216 Bibcode 2016PlSoi 403 167H doi 10 1007 s11104 015 2764 2 ISSN 1573 5036 S2CID 254948226 Hopper Stephen D 2009 09 01 OCBIL theory towards an integrated understanding of the evolution ecology and conservation of biodiversity on old climatically buffered infertile landscapes Plant and Soil 322 1 49 86 Bibcode 2009PlSoi 322 49H doi 10 1007 s11104 009 0068 0 ISSN 1573 5036 S2CID 28155038 North American Coastal Plain Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund Retrieved 7 February 2019 Noss Reed F Platt William J Sorrie Bruce A Weakley Alan S Means D Bruce Costanza Jennifer Peet Robert K 2015 How global biodiversity hotspots may go unrecognized lessons from the North American Coastal Plain PDF Diversity and Distributions 21 2 236 244 Bibcode 2015DivDi 21 236N doi 10 1111 ddi 12278 Kareiva Peter Marvier Michelle 2003 Conserving Biodiversity Coldspots Recent calls to direct conservation funding to the world s biodiversity hotspots may be bad investment advice American Scientist 91 4 344 351 doi 10 1511 2003 4 344 ISSN 0003 0996 JSTOR 27858246 Retrieved 10 May 2022 Daru Barnabas H van der Bank Michelle Davies T Jonathan 2014 Spatial incongruence among hotspots and complementary areas of tree diversity in southern Africa Diversity and Distributions 21 7 769 780 doi 10 1111 ddi 12290 S2CID 18417574 Possingham Hugh P Wilson Kerrie A August 2005 Turning up the heat on hotspots Nature 436 7053 919 920 doi 10 1038 436919a ISSN 1476 4687 PMID 16107821 S2CID 4398455 Further reading editDedicated issue of Philosophical Transactions B on Biodiversity Hotspots Some articles are freely available Spyros Sfenthourakis Anastasios Legakis Hotspots of endemic terrestrial invertebrates in Southern Greece Kluwer Academic Publishers 2001External links edit nbsp Look up biodiversity hotspot in Wiktionary the free dictionary A Z of Areas of Biodiversity Importance Biodiversity Hotspots Conservation International s Biodiversity Hotspots project African Wild Dog Conservancy s Biodiversity Hotspots Project Biodiversity hotspots in India New biodiversity maps color coded to show hotspots Shapefile of the Biodiversity Hotspots v2016 1 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Biodiversity hotspot amp oldid 1207364779, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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