Ok, so here’s just one last study that I’ve found that focuses on refugia and conservation. The aim of Medail and Diadema (2009)’s research was to compare the location of refugial areas with the locations of regional hotspots of plant biodiversity. They then discuss how biogeographicalstudies – studies of ‘the distribution of species, organisms, and ecosystems in space and through geological time’ – and results from genetic analyses can be combined to ‘guide global conservation strategies.
The authors managed to identify a total of 52 proposed refugial areas from scientific literature and showed that they were significantly associated with the hotspots of plant biodiversity. The map in Figure 1 shows the locations of the 52 supposed refugial areas (shaded in dark grey) and the 10 regional hotspots of plant biodiversity (surrounded by the large broken lines). As you can see, half of the refugia occur within the hotspots.
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| Source: Medail and Diadema (2009) |
Medail and Diadema (2009) conclude that the refugial areas constitute a high conservation priority as ‘key areas for the long-term persistence of species and genetic diversity’, especially in the face of anthropogenic climate change. They refer to these areas as ‘phylogeographical hotspots’, which they define as ‘significant reservoirs of unique genetic diversity favourable to the evolutionary processes of Mediterranean plant species’.
I know that both this paper and the one discussed in the previous post don’t focus specifically on cryptic Northern refugia, but I think that the conclusions drawn from these 2 pieces of research in terms of the role that refugia can potentially play in conservation efforts could be applied to more Northern latitudes as well. I think the basic principles are the same wherever the studies have taken place. Maybe there has been less attention paid to the role of cryptic Northern refugia in wildlife conservation because the concept of cryptic Northern refugia itself is relatively new and scientists have only relatively recently collected and put forward evidence to establish their existence.
I know that both this paper and the one discussed in the previous post don’t focus specifically on cryptic Northern refugia, but I think that the conclusions drawn from these 2 pieces of research in terms of the role that refugia can potentially play in conservation efforts could be applied to more Northern latitudes as well. I think the basic principles are the same wherever the studies have taken place. Maybe there has been less attention paid to the role of cryptic Northern refugia in wildlife conservation because the concept of cryptic Northern refugia itself is relatively new and scientists have only relatively recently collected and put forward evidence to establish their existence.
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