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Performance and Consistency of Indicator Groups in Two Biodiversity Hotspots

BACKGROUND: In a world limited by data availability and limited funds for conservation, scientists and practitioners must use indicator groups to define spatial conservation priorities. Several studies have evaluated the effectiveness of indicator groups, but still little is known about the consiste...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Trindade-Filho, Joaquim, Loyola, Rafael Dias
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102650/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21637330
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019746
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author Trindade-Filho, Joaquim
Loyola, Rafael Dias
author_facet Trindade-Filho, Joaquim
Loyola, Rafael Dias
author_sort Trindade-Filho, Joaquim
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: In a world limited by data availability and limited funds for conservation, scientists and practitioners must use indicator groups to define spatial conservation priorities. Several studies have evaluated the effectiveness of indicator groups, but still little is known about the consistency in performance of these groups in different regions, which would allow their a priori selection. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We systematically examined the effectiveness and the consistency of nine indicator groups in representing mammal species in two top-ranked Biodiversity Hotspots (BH): the Brazilian Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest. To test for group effectiveness we first found the best sets of sites able to maximize the representation of each indicator group in the BH and then calculated the average representation of different target species by the indicator groups in the BH. We considered consistent indicator groups whose representation of target species was not statistically different between BH. We called effective those groups that outperformed the target-species representation achieved by random sets of species. Effective indicator groups required the selection of less than 2% of the BH area for representing target species. Restricted-range species were the most effective indicators for the representation of all mammal diversity as well as target species. It was also the only group with high consistency. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We show that several indicator groups could be applied as shortcuts for representing mammal species in the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest to develop conservation plans, however, only restricted-range species consistently held as the most effective indicator group for such a task. This group is of particular importance in conservation planning as it captures high diversity of endemic and endangered species.
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spelling pubmed-31026502011-06-02 Performance and Consistency of Indicator Groups in Two Biodiversity Hotspots Trindade-Filho, Joaquim Loyola, Rafael Dias PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: In a world limited by data availability and limited funds for conservation, scientists and practitioners must use indicator groups to define spatial conservation priorities. Several studies have evaluated the effectiveness of indicator groups, but still little is known about the consistency in performance of these groups in different regions, which would allow their a priori selection. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We systematically examined the effectiveness and the consistency of nine indicator groups in representing mammal species in two top-ranked Biodiversity Hotspots (BH): the Brazilian Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest. To test for group effectiveness we first found the best sets of sites able to maximize the representation of each indicator group in the BH and then calculated the average representation of different target species by the indicator groups in the BH. We considered consistent indicator groups whose representation of target species was not statistically different between BH. We called effective those groups that outperformed the target-species representation achieved by random sets of species. Effective indicator groups required the selection of less than 2% of the BH area for representing target species. Restricted-range species were the most effective indicators for the representation of all mammal diversity as well as target species. It was also the only group with high consistency. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We show that several indicator groups could be applied as shortcuts for representing mammal species in the Cerrado and the Atlantic Forest to develop conservation plans, however, only restricted-range species consistently held as the most effective indicator group for such a task. This group is of particular importance in conservation planning as it captures high diversity of endemic and endangered species. Public Library of Science 2011-05-26 /pmc/articles/PMC3102650/ /pubmed/21637330 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019746 Text en Trindade-Filho, Loyola. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Trindade-Filho, Joaquim
Loyola, Rafael Dias
Performance and Consistency of Indicator Groups in Two Biodiversity Hotspots
title Performance and Consistency of Indicator Groups in Two Biodiversity Hotspots
title_full Performance and Consistency of Indicator Groups in Two Biodiversity Hotspots
title_fullStr Performance and Consistency of Indicator Groups in Two Biodiversity Hotspots
title_full_unstemmed Performance and Consistency of Indicator Groups in Two Biodiversity Hotspots
title_short Performance and Consistency of Indicator Groups in Two Biodiversity Hotspots
title_sort performance and consistency of indicator groups in two biodiversity hotspots
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3102650/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21637330
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0019746
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