Being able to efficiently and accurately delimit species is one of the most basic and important aspects of systematics because species are the fundamental unit of analysis in biogeography, ecology, and conservation. We present a rationale and approach for combining ecological niche modeling, spatially explicit analyses of environmental data, and phylogenetics in species delimitation, and we use...

Potential distributions of endemic relic shrubs in western Ordos were poorly mapped, which hindered our implementation of proper conservation. Here we investigated the applicability of ecological niche modeling for endangered relic shrubs to detect areas of priority for biodiversity conservation and analyze differences in ecological niche spaces used by relic shrubs. We applied ordination and n...

—Modeling approaches that relate known occurrences of species to landscape features to discover ecological properties and predict geographic occurrences have seen extensive recent application in ecology, systematics, and conservation. A key component in this process is estimation or characterization of species’ distributions in ecological space, which can then be useful in understanding their p...

BACKGROUND Cryptococcus gattii emerged on Vancouver Island, British Columbia (BC), Canada, in 1999, causing human and animal illness. Environmental sampling for C.gattii in southwestern BC has isolated the fungal organism from native vegetation, soil, air, and water. OBJECTIVES Our aim was to help public health officials in BC delineate where C.gattii is currently established and forecast are...

Non-native plants that can cause adverse effects are otherwise known as invasive alien plant species which pose a major threat to plant biodiversity conservation and sustainability. This study is dedicated to determine the plant diversity and to assess the vulnerability of Quezon Protected Landscape, Southern Luzon, the Philippines to invasive alien plant species. Data from 90 10x10 m randomly ...

Parastrachiidae is a small stinkbug family containing only one genus and two species, Parastrachia japonensis (Scott) (Hemiptera: Heteroptera: Pentatomoidea) and Parastrachia nagaensis Distant. The geographic distribution of the genus has been poorly studied. Niche conservatism refers to that idea that closely related species are more ecologically similar than would be expected, whereas niche d...

numbers of persian leopards have considerably decreased in recent years and for this reason it has been categorized as endangered in the iucn classification. habitat destruction is believed to be the main cause of the species population decline. hence, attempts to preserve the remaining habitats of this kind of animal effectively are deemed essential in reversing its downgrading trend. to hit t...