Instability, bias and incomplete data sampling: limnoterrestrial tardigrades and areas of endemism in the neotropics

• Grant number: 22/13688-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: November 01, 2022
• End date: June 30, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Zoology
• Principal Investigator: Antonia Cecília Zacagnini Amaral
• Grantee: Luisa Pucci Suzuki
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biologia (IB). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 18/10313-0 - Build-up of scientific collections of marine invertebrates: strategies for biodiversity conservation, AP.BTA.TEM

Abstract

Areas of endemism are basic units for biogeographic studies, providing information for understanding the spatial and biotic changes of an area. The identification of these areas is strongly influenced by methodological issues that affect data analysis, such as the limitations of the programs used, the sampling intensity, and the quality of databases containing geographic records. Biogeographic studies concerning various groups of living things are subject to these issues, but those involving microscopic organisms, such as Tardigrada, are especially affected by these problems. Despite being cosmopolitan organisms, tardigrades are poorly studied animals with sparse geographic records, making biogeographic analyses especially affected by sampling biases and taxonomic errors. Thus, the present work aims to analyze the impacts of methodological limitations on the delimitation of areas of endemism for limnotherrestrial tardigrades of the Neotropical region based on the methodology proposed by Casagranda & Goloboff (2019: Biol. J. Linn. Soc., 127, 143-155), starting from the construction of a database with all geographic records of these animals obtained in the literature from 1888 to 2022.