Ureña-Aranda Cinthya A, Rojas-Soto Octavio, Martínez-Meyer Enrique, Yáñez-Arenas Carlos, Landgrave Ramírez Rosario, Espinosa de los Monteros Alejandro
División de Posgrado, Instituto de Ecología, A. C., El Haya, Xalapa, Veracruz, México; Biología Evolutiva, Instituto de Ecología, A. C., El Haya, Xalapa, Veracruz, México.
Biología Evolutiva, Instituto de Ecología, A. C., El Haya, Xalapa, Veracruz, México.
PLoS One. 2015 Jun 26;10(6):e0131452. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0131452. eCollection 2015.
A widespread biogeographic pattern in nature is that population abundance is not uniform across the geographic range of species: most occurrence sites have relatively low numbers, whereas a few places contain orders of magnitude more individuals. The Bolson tortoise Gopherus flavomarginatus is endemic to a small region of the Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico, where habitat deterioration threatens this species with extinction. In this study we combined field burrows counts and the approach for modeling species abundance based on calculating the distance to the niche centroid to obtain range-wide abundance estimates. For the Bolson tortoise, we found a robust, negative relationship between observed burrows abundance and distance to the niche centroid, with a predictive capacity of 71%. Based on these results we identified four priority areas for the conservation of this microendemic and threatened tortoise. We conclude that this approach may be a useful approximation for identifying key areas for sampling and conservation efforts in elusive and rare species.
自然界中一种广泛存在的生物地理模式是，物种的种群丰度在其地理分布范围内并不均匀：大多数出现地点的数量相对较少，而少数地方的个体数量则高出几个数量级。博尔松龟（Gopherus flavomarginatus）是墨西哥奇瓦瓦沙漠一个小区域特有的物种，其栖息地退化使其面临灭绝威胁。在本研究中，我们结合了野外洞穴计数以及基于计算到生态位质心的距离来对物种丰度进行建模的方法，以获得整个分布范围内的丰度估计值。对于博尔松龟，我们发现观察到的洞穴丰度与到生态位质心的距离之间存在稳健的负相关关系，预测能力为71%。基于这些结果，我们确定了四个优先区域，用于保护这种微型特有且濒危的龟类。我们得出结论，这种方法对于确定难以捉摸的珍稀物种的采样和保护工作的关键区域可能是一种有用的近似方法。
