Trends and Developments in Biodiversity Informatics
Flora brasiliensis Revisited
Modeling of geographic distribution for species with restricted
distribution
Marinez Ferreira de Siqueira (CRIA),
A. Townsend Peterson (U. Kansas)
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The Cerrado biome is rich in endemic species, particularly of plants,
for which endemism reaches 44%; for tree species, about 30%
are known from single geographic locations. Because of their extremely
restricted known distributions, these species cannot be treated by more
conventional ecological niche modeling methods, such as the GARP models
that have been presented earlier in this series of meetings. So, what
can we do to understand the distributions of such poorly known species?
Here, we develop an exploratory approach based on the simplest of
measures-similarity in ecological space. The idea is to characterize
the landscape and region surrounding the one known occurrence as to how
similar or different it is in terms of ecological parameters. As a first
exploration, we developed such a visualization for Byrsonima subterranea
Brad. & Mark. (Malpighiaceae). The single known point used in this first
test is located at Assis Ecological Station, a Conservation Unit in São
Paulo State. To test the applicability of this approach, we will soon
go to the field to assess whether additional occurrences of this species
are concentrated in areas that are highly similar to the single known
locality. This approach is highly experimental, and its presentation at
this point is quite preliminary, but it is an illustration of potential
approaches to understanding better even the most poorly known species.
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