Temporal Stability of Biodiversity Conservation Strategies

• Grant number: 24/02798-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: April 01, 2024
• End date: July 31, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology - Applied Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Mario Ribeiro de Moura
• Grantee: Igor Eidi Correa Okawada
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biologia (IB). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 21/11840-6 - Big Data & biodiversity conservation: assessing the impact of biodiversity knowledge accumulation on conservation planning, AP.JP

Abstract

The first extinctions resulting from anthropogenic activities occurred around the 18th century, a period coinciding with the onset of modern taxonomy. In fact, species have been erased from the tree of life before we became aware of their existence. These unknown species are not explicitly incorporated into conservation strategies, with their inclusion only taking place after the publication of their formal description. Considering that thousands of species are described each year, conservation strategies designed with incomplete data are likely to lose effectiveness in the future. For instance, among terrestrial vertebrates alone, 25% of the nearly 35,000 known species were described after 1990, with estimates suggesting that 15-30 thousand species still remain unknown. As our knowledge of biodiversity increases, different areas may emerge as crucial for conservation, potentially contributing to altering the effectiveness of long-term conservation strategies. The aim is to elucidate which regions, biomes, and countries have undergone changes in importance for conservation over the past decades.