How to prioritize areas for new ant surveys? Integrating historical data on species occurrence records and habitat loss
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ORIGINAL PAPER
How to prioritize areas for new ant surveys? Integrating historical data on species occurrence records and habitat loss Raquel Divieso1 · Ana Rorato2 · Rodrigo M. Feitosa1 · Andreas L. S. Meyer3 · Marcio R. Pie1 Received: 8 April 2020 / Accepted: 7 August 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Habitat loss is a leading cause of extinctions, which may occur even before species are recorded or formally described. On the other hand, limitations in species distribution data and sampling biases can hamper inferences about patterns of species richness that form the basis of conservation strategies. Insects, despite their crucial roles in terrestrial ecosystems, are still largely neglected when dealing with biological inventories. Among insects, ants are of unique importance because of their species richness, widespread distribution, and due to their key ecosystem functions such as seed dispersal, soil nutrient cycling, predation, and biological control. In this study, we prioritize different Brazilian biomes and ecoregions for new ant surveys based on information on the distribution of occurrence records and two estimates of habitat loss for the period between 2000 and 2016. We compiled nearly 8000 ant occurrence records, including a total of 1170 species. The Caatinga was the biome showing the greatest urgency for new inventories, whereas the Atlantic Forest had the lowest urgency. However, there were considerable differences of priority between ecoregions belonging to each biome, thus underscoring the need to pay special attention to these geographical units and their characteristic associated with ant species. The prioritization of poorly studied sites with an imminent risk of habitat loss can be a valuable starting point for filling knowledge gaps and can help in formulating new strategies of conservation. The dataset provided here may also be useful in studies on the distribution of ant diversity in Brazil. Keywords Biotic surveys · Habitat loss · Conservation · Wallacean shortfall · Formicidae · Brazil
Introduction After nearly a decade, the state-of-affairs identified by May (2011) still rings true: “[w]e are astonishingly ignorant about how many species are alive on earth today, and even more ignorant about how many we can lose yet still maintain ecosystem services that humanity ultimately depends upon”. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10841-020-00262-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Raquel Divieso [email protected] 1
Departamento de Zoologia, Universidade Federal do Paraná, C.P. 19020, Curitiba, PR 81531‑980, Brazil
2
Centro de Ciência do Sistema Terrestre, Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, São José dos Campos, SP, Brazil
3
African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
Alleviating this plight is particularly challenging given that time and financial resources can severely limit the accu
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