Book reviewed in this article: Topics in Marine Biology, Proceedings of the 22nd European Marine Biology Symposium, edited by J. Ros. The Wisdom of the Genes, edited by C. Willis. Mapping the Code: the Human Genome Project and the Choices of Modern Science, by J. Davies. Parallels in Cell to Cell Junctions in Plants and Animals, edited by A. W. Robards, W.J. Lucas, J. D. Pitts, H.J. Jongsma and D. C. Spray. Analytical Biogeography, edited by A. A. Myers and P. S. Giller The Comparative Method in Evolutionary Biology, by P. H. Harvey and M. D. Pagel. Climatic Change and Plant Genetic Resources, edited by M. Jackson, B. V. Ford-Lloyd and N. L. Perry. Lake Tanganyika and its Life, edited by G. W. Coulter. Darwin, by A. Desmond and J. Moore.
Abstract The distribution and classification of life on earth has long been of interest to biological theorists, as well as to travellers and explorers. Cladistic biogeography is the study of the historical and evolutionary relationships between species, based on their particular distribution patterns across the earth. Analysis of the distributions of species in different areas of the world can tell us how those species and areas are related, what regions or larger groups of areas exist, and what their origins might be. The first edition of Cladistic Biogeography was published in 1986. It was a concise exposition of the history, methods, applications of, and prospects for cladistic biogeography. Well reviewed, and widely used in teaching, Cladistic Biogeography is still in demand, despite having been out of print for some time. This new edition draws on a wide range of examples, both plant and animal, from marine, terrestrial, and freshwater habitats. It has been updated throughout, with the chapters being rewritten and expanded to incorporate the latest research findings and theoretical and methodological advances in this dynamic field.
Reyes-Betancort, J.A., Santos Guerra, A., Guma, I.R., Humphries, C.J. & Carine, M.A. 2008. Diversity, rarity and the evolution and conservation of the Canary Islands endemic flora. Anales Jard. Bot. Madrid 65(1): 25-45. The endemic vascular flora of the Canary Islands comprises over 680, taxa collectively accounting for more than 50% of the total native flora. To investigate geographical patterns of diversity within the endemic flora, distribution data from published sources together with other field observation and herbarium data were used to compile a data matrix comprising the distrib- utions of ca. 90% of endemic taxa scored on a 10 × 10km UTM grid. WORLDMAP was then used to investigate patterns of en- demic diversity, range size rarity (a measure of endemicity), phy- logenetic diversity and threatened taxon richness. Endemic tax- on richness was found to be highly heterogeneous across the archipelago, with cells containing between one and 139 taxa each (0.05-22.82% of endemic diversity). Patterns of variation in range size rarity and phylogenetic diversity were found to be largely congruent with endemic diversity, although some cells exhibited markedly higher range size rarity scores than would be predicted by their endemic diversity scores. In contrast, the pat- tern of endangered taxon richness across the archipelago dif- fered markedly from endemic taxon richness. Many cells in Lan- zarote, Fuerteventura and Gran Canaria exhibit higher endan- gered taxon richness scores than would be predicted from their endemic richness scores whereas in Tenerife, El Hierro, La Palma and La Gomera, the converse is generally true. The implications of the results both for understanding the evolution of Canary Is- land endemic diversity and for the conservation of the region's unique and vulnerable flora are considered.
Priority areas forin situconservation are an unavoidable consequence of competition with other land uses, although they are certainly not to be seen as the only areas of value for conservation. In 1990 an international workshop was convened in Manaus, Brazil, to identify priority areas within Amazonia by committee (Workshop-90). A substantial part of the data for this assessment came from five plant families recorded for theFlora Neotropica. We compare the success of the Workshop-90 method in representing these plant species with the results of using a simple quantitative method for seeking complementary areas. The promises of quantitative methods are twofold. First, they force people to make their values explicit, which is important because priorities are dependent on the values and goals of individuals and are not universal. Second, quantitative methods can achieve representation of more of what is valued. For example, within the 90 top-priority areas (an arbitrary but convenient figure taken from Workshop-90), species representation is shown to be increased when using the complementary areas method by 83%. Simple computer implementations of this method can provide the means for fast inter-active exploration of flexibility in the many alternative area choices. This permits monitoring and review with minimum effort as new data on species and threats are acquired. On the other hand, the problem for all methods is the need for very large numbers of data, whether based on species or on any other surrogates for biodiversity, if well-informed decisions are to be made. This is not a particular problem of quantitative methods, but their explicit nature does highlight the shortcomings of data. For example, patterns in theFlora Neotropicadata show effects from small samples even though these data are among the best available for any large tropical wet-forest region. Furthermore, in order to assess the longer-term consequences of area choices, quantitative methods will require many explicit local data on factors affecting viability, threat and cost.
Abstract Developments in the theory of continental drift and its general acceptance during the 1960s and 1970s confirmed the idea that disjunct biotic patterns and corresponding geological patterns are due to the same events in earth history. That the earth, including relative sizes and composition of land masses, constantly changes means that many, if not all, migration or dispersal solutions to biogeographic questions are wrong, or, at least, overstated. To us, a more realistic solution came when Brundin (1966) applied Hennig’s (1950) definition of phylogenetic relationship to the problems of vicariant distribution of southern hemisphere chironomid midges.
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