Vertebrate Diversity and Conservation Clinton Jenkins (NC State - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Global Patterns of Terrestrial Vertebrate Diversity and Conservation Clinton Jenkins (NC State University) Stuart Pimm (Duke University) Lucas Joppa (Microsoft Conservation)

The Situation • Many species (5 – 30 million) • Most are undescribed (~1.5 million with scientific name) • Not all are equally vulnerable to extinction • Their distribution is uneven across the world, and among taxa • Identify the critical places to save them

Data for Terrestrial Vertebrates • Mammals & Amphibians (IUCN) • Birds (BirdLife) • Finer spatial scale (10 x 10 km)

Terrestrial Vertebrate Richness Distribution data from BirdLife & IUCN http://www.iucnredlist.org/technical-documents/spatial-data http://www.birdlife.org/datazone/info/spcdownload

Different patterns for each taxon (total richness) Birds ≈ Mammals Birds and Mammals ≠ Amphibians

Birds = Total Richness

Threatened Birds

Small-ranged Birds • 50% of species • More vulnerable to extinction • Very concentrated

Small-ranged Birds • 50% of species • More vulnerable to extinction • Very concentrated

Threatened Birds Small-ranged Birds

Threatened Mammals Small-ranged Mammals

Threatened Amphibians Small-ranged Amphibians 2.3% land 50% species

Vertebrate Hotspots • 5% of the world with highest richness • How well does it capture vertebrate diversity? • Based in public and transparent data

Comparison with the Myers hotspots

Current Protection Levels • Globally (Jenkins & Joppa 2009) – 13% of land in protected areas – 6% in strict protected areas • Vertebrate diversity centers – 12.6 to 20.4% in protected areas – 7.1 to 11% in strict protected areas • Better than random…needs to be much better

Acknowledgments Data - NatureServe, IUCN, BirdLife, WWF, NASA $$$ - NASA, Moore Foundation, Blue Moon Fund Félix Pharand @ Globaïa SavingSpecies.org (in press / online at PNAS this week)