Week 2

(NOTE: ALL ATTACHMENTS HAVE BEEN MOVED TO http://sites.google.com/site/conservationinmekong02/weekly-literature)

Students will:

Students will come to class each having read one published research article on an aspect of the gross evolutionary history of biodiversity within SE Asia. Each should give a very brief summary 2-5 minutes of what was learned from the article. All articles should be cited within this page.

[tli] Sodhi, Navjot, Lian Pin Koh, Barry W. Brook, and Peter K. L. Ng. 2004. Southeast Asian Biodiversity: An Impending Disaster. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19 (12): 654-660.

From above article: Four Overlapping Biodiversity "Hotspots" in Southeast Asia

[tli]

[arb] Guo, Qinfeng, Ricklefs, Robert E., Cody, Martin L. (1998) Vascular Plant Diversity in Eastern Asia and North America: Historical and Ecological Explanations. Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. Vol. 128: 123-136.

[arb] This TED talk is not specifically about plants, but it has a lot of good biogeography in it

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/paul_sereno_digs_up_dinosaurs.html

[wcm] Myers, N., R.A. Mittermeier, c.G. Mittermeier, G.A.B. da Fonseca & J. Kent. 2000. Biodiversity hotspots for conservation priorities. Nature 403:853-858. [wcm]

[wcm] From above article: Illustrates that there are two different hot spots on the Mekong.

[wcm]

[NC] D. Taylor, P. Saksena, P.G. Sanderson & K. Kucera. 1999. Environmental change and rain forests on the Sunda shelf of Southeast Asia: drought, fire and the biological cooling of biodiversity hotspots. Biodiversity and Conservation 8: 1159–1177. article file in the bottom. [NC]

[ln] Dudgeon, D. 2005. River rehabilitation for conservation of fish biodiversity in monsoonal Asia. Ecology and Society 10(2): 15. [ln]

[hl]Olsen, D.M. & E. Dinerstein. 2002. The global 200: Priority ecoregions for global conservation. Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 89(2):199-224.[hl]

[mr] Gaston, K.J., P. Williams, P. Eggleton, and C.J. Humphries. 1995. Large Scale Patterns of Biodiversity: Spatial Variation in Family Richness. Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Sciences 260(1358):149-154. [mr]

[fig] Woodruff, D.S. 1990. Genetics and Demography in the Conservation of Biodiversity. Journal of the Science Society of Thailand. 16(3-4):117-132.

[DS] Hewitt, Godfrey. The Structure of biodiversity-insights from molecular phylogeography. Frontiers in Zoology 1 (2004):4.

[kwb] Stibig, H.-J., F. Achard and S. Fritz. 2004. A new forest cover map of continental southeast Asia derived from SPOT-VEGETATION satellite imagery. Applied Vegetation Science 7: 153-162.[kwb]

[ss] Clements, Reuben, Javjots S. Sodhi, Menno Schilthuizen & Peter K.L. Ng. 2006. Limestone Karsts of Southeast Asia: Imperiled Arks of Biodiversity. BioScience 56(9):733-742.

[ss]

Prepare a creative combination of written sentences and paragraphs with literature citations along with web links to organize a discussion of the various terrestrial biomes and ecosystems along the Mekong. Characteristic plants of each biome should be clearly discussed for each.

[tli]

Terrestrial biomes include: Evergreen needleleaf, evergreen broadleaf, deciduous broadleaf, mixed cover, woodland, wooded grassland, closed shrubland, open shrubland, grasslands, and croplands. These are illustrated below.

Out of the University of Washington Department of Oceanogrphy is a collaborative research effort to research river basins in the world. It is an excellent resource for information and images concerning landuse in the Mekong basin:

http://boto.ocean.washington.edu/seasia/mekong.htm

[tli]

[mr] Although it does not include the whole Mekong River basin, I thought the map below shows dominant biomes in SEA rather clearly.

The white "other land" areas consist mostly of agricultural lands (especially rice) and other human-instensive uses.

from: Stibig, H.-J., F. Achard, and S. Fritz. 2004. A new forest cover map of continental southeast Asia derived from SPOT-VEGETATION satellite imagery. Applied Vegetation Science. 7: 153-162. [mr]

[NC]

Haruyama, Shigeko.Shida, Ken. 2008. Geomorphologic land classification map of the Mekong Delta

utilizing JERS-1 SAR images. HYDROLOGICAL PROCESSES [22], 1373–1381

Provide definitions of the terms "biodiversity hot spot," "biome," and "evolution" should be provided with complete citations for sources of each definition from the literature.

Biodiversity Hotspot

[fig]Biodiversity hot spots—those regions on Earth richest in endemic species under threat

Hopper, S.D., Gioia, P. 2004. The Southwest Australian Floristic Region: Evolution and Conservation of a Global Hot Spot of Biodiversity. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution and Systematics. 35(1): 623-650.[fig]

[ln] “A biodiversity hotspot is a region of the Earth which is extremely biologically diverse and also under severe threat due to habitat loss, climate change, or extensive species loss.”

Brooks, T.M., Mittermeier, R.A., Mittermeier, C.G., Fonseca, G.A.B., Rylands. A. B., Konstant, W.R., Flick, P., Pilgrim, J., Oldfield, S., Magin, G., & Hilton-Taylor, C. 2002. Habitat loss and extinction in the hotspots of biodiversity. Conservation Biology 16(4): 909-923.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-biodiversity-hotspot.htm [ln]

[NC] "Biodiversity hotspots are defined as areas...

(1) having lost at least 70% of the original area covered by native vegetation.

(2) having a high plant endemism level.

Vascular plants were used as biodiversity indicators in studies conducted by Myers (1988)"

M.-S. Tixier, S. Kreiter. 2008. Arthropods in biodiversity hotspots:the case of the Phytoseiidae (Acari: Mesostigmata).

Biodiversity and Conservation 16(11): 3011[NC]

Biome

[tli]

"Broad scale grouping of terrestrial ecosystems with similarities in vegetation structure, environment, and animal communities" (Whittaker 1975). Major formations include desert,semi-desert steppe, forest, grassland, woodland, and shrubland. Climate is considered alongside these formations in the division of biomes (Whitaker 1975, Gosz and Sharpe 1989).

Whittaker, R.H. 1975. Communities and ecosystems. Macmillan, New York.

Gosz, James, and Peter Sharpe. 1989. Broad-scaleconcepts for interactions of climate, topography and biota at biome transitions. Landscape Ecology 1 (2/3): 229-243.

[tli]

[fig]Biome- a combination of lifeform type and climate.

Running S.W., Hunt, Jr., E.R. 1993. Generalization of a forest ecosystem process model for other biomes, BIOME-BGC, and an application for global scale models. Academic Press, Inc. [fig]

[ln] Biome is a large community of plants and animals covering a large area of the Earth such as tropical rainforest or desert or savannah.

Jacobs, B.F. 2004. Palaeobotanical studies from tropical Africa: relevance to the evolution of forest, woodland and savannah biomes. The Royal Society (2004) 359, 1573-1583. [ln]

Evolution

[DS] "Common descent with modification." Inherited traits that change over time. Includes Genetic drift: if a trait will be passed on from one generation to the next, and the accumulation of these small changes over time can lead to the modification of the species.

Ayala, Francisco. 2007. Darwin's greatest discovery: Design without designer PNAS 2007 104:8567-8573

"Evolutionary Biology is the history of life and the process that leads to its diversity. Based on principles of adaption, chance and history, it seeks to explain all the characteristics of organisms."

Futuyama, Douglas ed al., Evolultion, Science and Society.