This ‘Life Map’ shows where undetected species may be weeping

Orangutan in Indonesia, one of the biodiversity research sites.

Orangutan in Indonesia, one of the biodiversity research sites.
Photo: CHAIDEER MAHYUDDIN / AFP via Getty Images (Getty Images)

Nine years ago, a team of Yale ecologists did world life mapping, a project that showed bipatterns of diversity in a geographical context; basically, a heat map of animal life. Now, they have gone a step further: listing the most likely spots for the existence of unknown species, in the hope that these animals will be recorded before they disappear.

Research is the team published today in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution. They took over 32,000 species of four biological classes (amphibians, reptiles, mammals and birds) to calculate what seems to have been undiscovered. Their findings show that a vast expanse of life remains uncatalogued on Earth, especially from Southeast Asia and Northwest South America.

“Using recent models to detect biological and environmental drivers, we can make very reliable predictions about the proportion of future detections. reasonably large groups of species (say, amphibian families) and regions (say, the Atlantic Forest area of ​​Brazil), ”co-author Walter Jetz, a biologist at Yale University, said in an email. “As we run these models for the whole world and across the major terrestrial vertebra bodies, this is an exciting foundation for finding gaps and opportunities for future discovery.”

Mapping the “traceability” of these animals encourages research teams to look specifically at areas where they are more likely to come across previously unrecorded animals, the report said. authors. The mapping result can be seen here.

“We hope to shift the focus from questions such as’ How many species have not been found out ann? to more active people such as ‘Where and what?’ ”He said lead author Mario Moura, a biologist at the University of Paraíba in Brazil, in an email. “It is strives to see the importance of tropical forests as a cradle of discovery, emphasizes the urgent need to protect tropical forests and halt deforestation if we are to gain access to our bio- diversity. ”

Moura noted that previous estimates for species discovery only measured the number of species per year from 1758, the year Carl Linnaeus began binomial names. However, this approach does not take into account important factors such as gender habitat or size. (No wonder Madagascar nano-chameleon documents strayed until this year).

Deforestation and fires in the Amazon pose a major threat to local species.

Deforestation and fires in the Amazon pose a major threat to local species.
Photo: Photo by JOAO LAET / AFP via Getty Images (Getty Images)

Nesuddenly, measuring biodiversity in future geographical terms (know that Madagascar in New Zealand is worth exploring, for example) to attends as a heuristic for the search for undiscovered species, and more and more of them are emerging that are critically endangered. So is the Popa langur, a species of monkey in Myanmar – also a special place for biodiversity with the latest assessment by the team.

It is unfortunate that human enterprise has favored business benefits that mean a loss for wildlife. Even in the most remote parts of the planet, humanity is finding a way to make a difference.

But that is why this project exists, the authors said: to understand what is out there, before there is still a record.

“It’s a very exciting project, which compiles a number of datasets on species distribution and allows us to better understand the patterns of biodiversity on the planet,” said Moura. “We hope to encourage citizen scientists and biodiversity enthusiasts about the importance of species discovery and to avoid discussions and agreements from those responsible for decision-making and conservation design. ”

And while the team’s estimates aren’t accurate at all, the idea is that such a prediction will bring out specific techniques for future site discovery. In other words, they want to work softer, not harder, towards finding unknown, potentially endangered species.

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