The data void in modeling current and future distributions of tropical species

Abstract:

Conserving biodiversity in the face of climate change requires a pbkp_redictive ecology of species distributions. Nowhere is this need more acute than in the tropics, which harbor the majority of Earth's species and face rapid and large climate and land-use changes. However, the study of species distributions and their responses to climate change in high diversity tropical regions is potentially crippled by a lack of basic data. We analyzed a database representing more than 800 000 unique geo-referenced natural history collections to determine what fraction of tropical plant species has sufficient numbers of available collections for use in the habitat or niche models commonly used to pbkp_redict species responses to climate change. We found that more than nine out of 10 species from the three principle tropical realms are so poorly collected (n < 20 records) that they are essentially invisible to modern modeling and conservation tools. In order to pbkp_redict the impact of climate change on tropical species, efforts must be made to increase the amount of data available from tropical countries through a combination of collecting new specimens and digitizing existing records. © 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Año de publicación:

2011

Keywords:

• Climate Change
• Tropical plants
• habitat modeling
• Conservation biogeography
• Bioclimatic niche envelope
• Species migrations
• natural history collections

Fuente:

scopus