Prioritizing global marine mammal habitats using density maps in place of range maps
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Date
04/03/2014Author
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Grant ID
253407
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Abstract
Despite lessons from terrestrial systems, conservation efforts in marine systems continue to focus on identifying priority sites for protection based on high species richness inferred from range maps. Range maps oversimplify spatial variability in animal distributions by assuming uniform distribution within range and de facto giving equal weight to critical and marginal habitats. We used Marxan ver. 2.43 to compare species richness-based systematic reserve network solutions using information about marine mammal range and relative abundance. At a global scale, reserve network solutions were strongly sensitive to model inputs and assumptions. Solutions based on different input data overlapped by a third at most, with agreement as low as 10% in some cases. At a regional scale, species richness was inversely related to density, such that species richness hotspots excluded highest-density areas for all species. Based on these findings, we caution that species-richness estimates derived from range maps and used as input in conservation planning exercises may inadvertently lead to protection of largely marginal habitat.
Citation
Williams , R , Grand , J , Hooker , S K , Buckland , S T , Reeves , R R , Rojas-Bracho , L , Sandilands , D & Kaschner , K 2014 , ' Prioritizing global marine mammal habitats using density maps in place of range maps ' , Ecography , vol. 37 , no. 3 , pp. 212-220 . https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1600-0587.2013.00479.x
Publication
Ecography
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0906-7590Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright © 2013 The Authors. Ecography published by Nordic Society Oikos. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
RW collected the BC data with Raincoast Conservation Foundation, and was supported by a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship within the 7th European Community Framework Programme (proposal no. 253407 (call reference: FP7‐PEOPLE‐2009‐IIF)) during the analysis stage.Collections
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