Symposium summary: Conservation biogeography

Abstract

ISSN 1948‐6596 news and update symposium summary Conservation biogeography A contributed session at the 5th International Biogeography Society Conference – Heraklion, Greece, 7–11 January 2011 Theory and analyses developed in biogeography can provide new and valuable insights into how to conserve diversity, especially in an era of in‐ creased human degradation of both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, coincident with climate change (Whittaker et al. 2005). Inspired by in‐ creasing research in the field, and by Richard Ladle and Rob Whittaker’s new edited book ‘Conservation Biogeography’ (2011), the Interna‐ tional Biogeography Society devoted a contrib‐ uted session to conservation biogeography at its fifth biennial conference. The session covered six related themes: biotic homogenization, invasive species, agricultural ecology, disease ecology, re‐ serve design and communicating conservation biogeography to the general public. Climate change, also an important theme in conservation biogeography, was discussed in its own contrib‐ uted paper session. In the first talk, Martin Winter and col‐ leagues evaluated the extent to which invasive species lead to homogenization of species, traits and phylogenetic composition of vascular plants and vertebrates in North America and Europe. Their analyses considerably extend current work which has mostly been conducted at the species level and has not evaluated all three levels of di‐ versity simultaneously. They found that all three levels of diversity were influenced by non‐native species, and communities within and among the two regions are becoming increasingly similar. Nonetheless, climatic differences and geographic distance between North America and Europe still seem to limit homogenization. Also on the theme of invasions, Alejandro Ordonez (and co‐author Olff Han) evaluated how patterns of species and functional trait distribution of co‐occurring native plants varied across a nested series of spatial scales. Their analyses revealed the importance of both trait‐based environmental filtering and local‐ scale factors on the distribution of invasive spe‐ cies. George Roderick and colleagues contrib‐ uted a different perspective on the topic of com‐ munity assembly. They used a series of case stud‐ ies of crops and their herbivorous pests and natu‐ ral enemies to uncover patterns of assembly of co ‐occurring species in the Mediterranean. They found that some herbivores and their natural ene‐ mies were already present in the region before crop domestication, while others were associated with subsequent movements of domesticated crops into the region, both early and more recent. The variety of mechanisms by which pests of crop‐ plants moved into the Mediterranean highlights the complexity of the origins of these multispecies interactions, and the challenges associated with conserving—the earliest known—native diversity . Harris Nyeema (with co‐author Robert Dunn) also evaluated multispecies interactions and the diver‐ sity of co‐occurring species, in their study of carni‐ vores and their parasites. They modeled host– parasite associations to explore the consequences of loss of carnivore diversity (29 species) in North America on zoonoses (i.e., diseases transmitted between humans and wildlife) and the implica‐ tions for parasite diversity and conservation. They showed that the loss of carnivores was a potential human and wildlife health risk, and a concern for parasite conservation because it increased the overall proportion of zoonotic parasites (relative to non‐zoonotic parasites) and parasite homoge‐ neity. Lira‐Noriega, Villalobos and colleagues pre‐ sented a method to simultaneously analyze spe‐ cies richness and range size to indentify distinctive assemblages of species. Distinctive assemblages are both species rich and harbour small‐ranged species, the combination of which is not always included in conservation assessments. They found that distinct assemblages are poorly represented within the Mexican national reserve system, and thus these tools have clear conservation value. frontiers of biogeography 3.1, 2011 — © 2011 the authors; journal compilation © 2011 The International Biogeography Society