Abstract
Biodiversity hotspots are centers of biological diversity and particularly threatened by anthropogenic activities. Their true magnitude of species diversity and endemism, however, is still largely unknown as species diversity is traditionally assessed using morphological descriptions only, thereby ignoring cryptic species. This directly limits evidence-based monitoring and management strategies. Here we used molecular species delimitation methods to quantify cryptic diversity of the montane amphipods in the Irano-Anatolian and Caucasus biodiversity hotspots. Amphipods are ecosystem engineers in rivers and lakes. Species diversity was assessed by analysing two genetic markers (mitochondrial COI and nuclear 28S rDNA), compared with morphological assignments. Our results unambiguously demonstrate that species diversity and endemism is dramatically underestimated, with 42 genetically identified freshwater species in only five reported morphospecies. Over 90% of the newly recovered species cluster inside Gammarus komareki and G. lacustris; 69% of the recovered species comprise narrow range endemics. Amphipod biodiversity is drastically underestimated for the studied regions. Thus, the risk of biodiversity loss is significantly greater than currently inferred as most endangered species remain unrecognized and/or are only found locally. Integrative application of genetic assessments in monitoring programs will help to understand the true magnitude of biodiversity and accurately evaluate its threat status.
Highlights
Biodiversity hotspots are centers of biological diversity and threatened by anthropogenic activities
We used freshwater amphipods of the genus Gammarus sampled from freshwater ecosystems of two mountain ranges in the Caucasus (Northern slopes of the Alborz Mountains, Iran) and Irano-Anatolian biodiversity hotspot (Zagros Mountains and southern slopes of the Alborz, both Iran) as a model to test whether the true species diversity is accurately reflected by the present morphology-based estimates
The true magnitude of biodiversity loss is a topic of central debate
Summary
Biodiversity hotspots are centers of biological diversity and threatened by anthropogenic activities. The efficiency of traditional morphology-based methods in monitoring biodiversity changes is widely accepted, it is well known that these methods lack the ability to identify cryptic species and cannot inform on the loss of genetic variation They underestimate the “true” biological diversity present in an ecosystem, which adds www.nature.com/scientificreports/. We used freshwater amphipods of the genus Gammarus sampled from freshwater ecosystems of two mountain ranges in the Caucasus (Northern slopes of the Alborz Mountains, Iran) and Irano-Anatolian biodiversity hotspot (Zagros Mountains and southern slopes of the Alborz, both Iran) as a model to test whether the true species diversity is accurately reflected by the present morphology-based estimates. Based on recent data from other regions[23,24,25,26,27,36] we expect that several of the reported widespread species will consist of regional endemics
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