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New biodiversity metric defined by researchers

Date:
August 29, 2014
Source:
City College of New York
Summary:
To understand how the repeated climatic shifts over the last 120,000 years may have influenced today's patterns of genetic diversity, a team of researchers developed a new biodiversity metric called 'phylogeographic endemism.'
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To understand how the repeated climatic shifts over the last 120,000 years may have influenced today's patterns of genetic diversity, a team of researchers led by City College of New York biologist Dr. Ana Carnaval developed a new biodiversity metric called "phylogeographic endemism."

It quantifies the degree to which the genetic variation within species is restricted in geographical space.

Dr. Carnaval, an assistant professor of biology, and 14 other researchers from institutions in Brazil, Australia and the United States, analyzed the effects of current and past climatic variation on the genetic diversity of 25 vertebrates in the highly diverse yet much threatened Brazilian Atlantic rainforest.

"We discovered that the climatic regimes of the northern and southern portions of the Atlantic forest are strikingly different. While past climate dynamics predicted phylogeographic endemism in the northern forests, contemporary climatic heterogeneity explains endemism in the south," she said. "Studying these forest domains in isolation helped us to identify those areas holding most unique and small-ranged genetic variation, guiding research and conservation."

The research findings appear in a paper entitled, "Prediction of phylogeographic endemism in an environmentally complex biome," in the latest edition of the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The latter is the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, dedicated to the rapid publication and broad dissemination of high-quality research papers.


Story Source:

Materials provided by City College of New York. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. A. C. Carnaval, E. Waltari, M. T. Rodrigues, D. Rosauer, J. VanDerWal, R. Damasceno, I. Prates, M. Strangas, Z. Spanos, D. Rivera, M. R. Pie, C. R. Firkowski, M. R. Bornschein, L. F. Ribeiro, C. Moritz. Prediction of phylogeographic endemism in an environmentally complex biome. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2014; 281 (1792): 20141461 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2014.1461

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City College of New York. "New biodiversity metric defined by researchers." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 29 August 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140829135450.htm>.
City College of New York. (2014, August 29). New biodiversity metric defined by researchers. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 28, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140829135450.htm
City College of New York. "New biodiversity metric defined by researchers." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/08/140829135450.htm (accessed March 28, 2024).

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