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Biodiversity hotspots house most undiscovered plant species.

Joppa, Lucas N., Roberts, David L., Myers, Norman, Pimm, Stuart L. (2011) Biodiversity hotspots house most undiscovered plant species. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 108 (32). pp. 13171-13176. ISSN 0027-8424. (doi:10.1073/pnas.1109389108) (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:31369)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1109389108

Abstract

For most organisms, the number of described species considerably

underestimates how many exist. This is itself a problem and causes

secondary complications given present high rates of species extinction.

Known numbers of flowering plants form the basis of biodiversity

“hotspots”—places where high levels of endemism and

habitat loss coincide to produce high extinction rates. Howdifferent

would conservation priorities be if the catalog were complete? Approximately

15% more species of flowering plant are likely still undiscovered.

They are almost certainly rare, and depending on where

they live, suffer high risks of extinction from habitat loss and global

climate disruption. By using a model that incorporates taxonomic

effort over time, regions predicted to contain large numbers of undiscovered

species are already conservation priorities. Our results

leave global conservation priorities more or less intact, but suggest

considerably higher levels of species imperilment than previously

acknowledged.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1073/pnas.1109389108
Uncontrolled keywords: global priorities; species discovery; angiosperm
Subjects: G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > GE Environmental Sciences
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Anthropology and Conservation > DICE (Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology)
Depositing User: Shelley Urwin
Date Deposited: 08 Oct 2012 12:25 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:09 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/31369 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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