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ECOREGIONS AND VERTEBRATE ASSEMBLAGES: INVESTIGATING INDICATORS FOR PRIORITIZING AREAS OF CONSERVATION CONCERN
Citation:
Lawler, J. J., D. White, AND J. C. Sifneos. ECOREGIONS AND VERTEBRATE ASSEMBLAGES: INVESTIGATING INDICATORS FOR PRIORITIZING AREAS OF CONSERVATION CONCERN. Presented at US Chapter of International Association of Landscape Ecology, Tempe, AZ, April 27, 2001.
Description:
Surrogates and indicator groups have been proposed as useful tools for selecting areas for conservation when the knowledge of species distributions is limited. Tests of these concepts often produce a wide range of results which depend on the surrogates chosen as well as the spatial scale of the study. We investigated the use of both individual taxa and ecoregions as possible surrogates for all vertebrates for prioritizing areas for conservation in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. First we investigated the degree to which species richness of birds, mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and fish were correlated. Then we defined species assemblages for each taxon using cluster analysis and measured the level of correspondence between the assemblages and ecoregions in the study area. Finally, we employed the concept of complementarity to determine the proportion of all vertebrates included in areas selected to cover all species of a particular taxon, or a minimum area of all ecoregions. Species richness was only weakly correlated across the four taxa (ranging from uncorrelated to r=0.55 for birds and mammals). In addition, species assemblages derived from cluster analyses showed a moderate level of correspondence with ecoregions (50-76% agreement as measured with classification tree models). Despite these relatively weak associations, we found that both individual taxa and ecoregions showed potential for being good surrogates with respect to complemenetarity. Ecoregions, fish and reptiles were the best surrogates covering 86%, 83%, and 79% of all other species respectively. Our results stress that although patterns of species richness may be only weakly correlated, individual taxa or ecoregions which capture a range of environmental conditions may be useful surrogates or indicators when areas are selected on the basis of complementarity.