Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Sechrest, Wes
• Brooks, Thomas M.
• Gustavo A. B. da Fonseca
• Konstant, William R.
• Mittermeier, Russell A.
• Purvis, Andy
• Rylands, Anthony B.
• Gittleman, John L.

Titel

Hotspots and the Conservation of Evolutionary History

Ist Teil von

• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS, 2002-02, Vol.99 (4), p.2067-2071

Ort / Verlag

United States: National Academy of Sciences

Erscheinungsjahr

2002

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Species diversity is unevenly distributed across the globe, with terrestrial diversity concentrated in a few restricted biodiversity hotspots. These areas are associated with high losses of primary vegetation and increased human population density, resulting in growing numbers of threatened species. We show that conservation of these hotspots is critical because they harbor even greater amounts of evolutionary history than expected by species numbers alone. We used supertrees for carnivores and primates to estimate that nearly 70% of the total amount of evolutionary history represented in these groups is found in 25 biodiversity hotspots.