Endozoochory and Fire as Germination Triggers in Neotropical Dry Forests: an Experimental Test

Biotropica ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guille Peguero ◽  
Josep M. Espelta
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Test ◽  
Dry Forests ◽  
Neotropical Dry Forests

White-tailed deer as the last megafauna dispersing seeds in Neotropical dry forests: the role of fruit and seed traits

Biotropica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Jara-Guerrero ◽  
Gema Escribano-Avila ◽  
Carlos Iván Espinosa ◽  
Marcelino De la Cruz ◽  
Marcos Méndez
Keyword(s):  
Seed Traits ◽  
Dry Forests ◽  
Neotropical Dry Forests

Diversity in neotropical dry forests

Science ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 353 (6306) ◽  
pp. 1377-1377 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. M. Sugden
Keyword(s):  
Dry Forests ◽  
Neotropical Dry Forests

scholarly journals Community-Based Importance and Quantification of Ecosystem Services, Disservices, Drivers, and Neotropical Dry Forests in a Rural Colombian Municipality

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 919
Author(s):  
Yuli Paola Tovar Tique ◽  
Francisco J. Escobedo ◽  
Nicola Clerici
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Ecosystem Services ◽  
Food Production ◽  
Forest Cover ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Air Purification ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Dry Forests ◽  
Neotropical Dry Forests ◽  
Management Institutions

Few studies analyze people’s preferences for ecosystem services (ES), disservices (ED) and drivers of change in less populated, tropical municipalities. Understanding such preferences and needs by the community and stakeholder groups before actually assessing, modelling, and measuring the supply of ES is key for decision-making and planning in municipalities, as well as for the conservation of nearby neotropical dry forests. We studied these dynamics in a small rural municipality in Colombia with limited data availability using semi-structured interviews and surveys, as well as ES-proxies and geospatial analyses. We then analyzed the supply and importance of two community identified ES and one ED from adjacent neotropical dry forests during 2005–2017. We found that respondents recognized air purification and food production as the most important ES. Increased temperatures and fires were the most important ED, while fires were also identified as an important driver of change. Air purification, via pollutant deposition to forest cover, remained approximately constant (116 ton/year), while food production (49 ton/ha) and fire occurrence, an ED, increased. Findings show how transdisciplinary research and participatory knowledge co-production among local communities, researchers and land management institutions can improve governance, decision making, policy uptake and planning efforts.

scholarly journals Incorporating Topological and Age Uncertainty into Event-Based Biogeography of Sand Spiders Supports Paleo-Islands in Galapagos and Ancient Connections among Neotropical Dry Forests

Diversity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 418
Author(s):  
Ivan L. F. Magalhaes ◽  
Adalberto J. Santos ◽  
Martín J. Ramírez
Keyword(s):  
Model Comparison ◽  
Total Evidence ◽  
Input Tree ◽  
Dry Forests ◽  
Biogeographic History ◽  
Distribution Ranges ◽  
Neotropical Dry Forests ◽  
Founder Event ◽  
Event Based ◽  
Age Estimates

Event-based biogeographic methods, such as dispersal-extinction-cladogenesis, have become increasingly popular for attempting to reconstruct the biogeographic history of organisms. Such methods employ distributional data of sampled species and a dated phylogenetic tree to estimate ancestral distribution ranges. Because the input tree is often a single consensus tree, uncertainty in topology and age estimates are rarely accounted for, even when they may affect the outcome of biogeographic estimates. Even when such uncertainties are taken into account for estimates of ancestral ranges, they are usually ignored when researchers compare competing biogeographic hypotheses. We explore the effect of incorporating this uncertainty in a biogeographic analysis of the 21 species of sand spiders (Sicariidae: Sicarius) from Neotropical xeric biomes, based on a total-evidence phylogeny including a complete sampling of the genus. Using a custom R script, we account for uncertainty in ages and topology by estimating ancestral ranges over a sample of trees from the posterior distribution of a Bayesian analysis, and for uncertainty in biogeographic estimates by using stochastic maps. This approach allows for counting biogeographic events such as dispersal among areas, counting lineages through time per area, and testing biogeographic hypotheses, while not overestimating the confidence in a single topology. Including uncertainty in ages indicates that Sicarius dispersed to the Galapagos Islands when the archipelago was formed by paleo-islands that are now submerged; model comparison strongly favors a scenario where dispersal took place before the current islands emerged. We also investigated past connections among currently disjunct Neotropical dry forests; failing to account for topological uncertainty underestimates possible connections among the Caatinga and Andean dry forests in favor of connections among Caatinga and Caribbean + Mesoamerican dry forests. Additionally, we find that biogeographic models including a founder-event speciation parameter (“+J”) are more prone to suffer from the overconfidence effects of estimating ancestral ranges using a single topology. This effect is alleviated by incorporating topological and age uncertainty while estimating stochastic maps, increasing the similarity in the inference of biogeographic events between models with or without a founder-event speciation parameter. We argue that incorporating phylogenetic uncertainty in biogeographic hypothesis-testing is valuable and should be a commonplace approach in the presence of rogue taxa or wide confidence intervals in age estimates, and especially when using models including founder-event speciation.

scholarly journals Incorporating topological and age uncertainty into event-based biogeography supports paleo-islands in Galapagos and ancient connections among Neotropical dry forests

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan L. F. Magalhaes ◽  
Adalberto J. Santos ◽  
Martín J Ramírez
Keyword(s):  
Model Comparison ◽  
Total Evidence ◽  
Input Tree ◽  
Dry Forests ◽  
Biogeographic History ◽  
Distribution Ranges ◽  
Neotropical Dry Forests ◽  
Founder Event ◽  
Event Based ◽  
Age Estimates

Event-based biogeographic methods, such as dispersal-extinction-cladogenesis, have become increasingly popular for attempting to reconstruct the biogeographic history of organisms. Such methods employ distributional data of sampled species and a dated phylogenetic tree to estimate ancestral distribution ranges. Because the input tree is often a single consensus tree, uncertainty in topology and age estimates are seldom taken into account, even when they may affect the outcome of biogeographic estimates. Even when such uncertainties are taken into account for estimates of ancestral ranges, they are usually ignored when researchers compare competing biogeographic hypotheses. We explore the effect of incorporating this uncertainty in a biogeographic analysis of the 21 species of sand spiders (Sicariidae: Sicarius) from Neotropical xeric biomes, based on a total-evidence phylogeny including a complete sampling of the genus. By using a custom R script made available here, we account for uncertainty in ages and topology by estimating ancestral ranges over a sample of trees from the posterior distribution of a Bayesian analysis, and for uncertainty in biogeographic estimates by using stochastic maps. This approach allows for counting biogeographic events such as dispersal among areas, counting lineages through time per area, and testing biogeographic hypotheses, while not overestimating the confidence in a single topology. Including uncertainty in ages indicates that Sicarius dispersed to the Galapagos Islands when the archipelago was formed by paleo-islands that are now drowned; model comparison strongly favors a scenario where dispersal took place before the current islands emerged. We also investigated past connections among currently disjunct Neotropical dry forests; failing to account for topological uncertainty underestimates possible connections among the Caatinga and Andean dry forests in favor of connections among Caatinga and Caribbean+Mesoamerican dry forests. Additionally, we find that biogeographic models including a founder-event speciation parameter (+J) are more prone to suffer from the overconfidence effects of estimating ancestral ranges using a single topology. This effect is alleviated by incorporating topological and age uncertainty while estimating stochastic maps, increasing the similarity in the inference of biogeographic events between models with or without a founder-event speciation parameter. We argue that incorporating phylogenetic uncertainty in biogeographic hypothesis-testing is valuable and should be a commonplace approach in the presence of rogue taxa or wide confidence intervals in age estimates, and especially when using models including founder-event speciation.

Identifying priority conservation areas for birds associated to endangered Neotropical dry forests

2018 ◽  
Vol 228 ◽  
pp. 205-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Prieto-Torres ◽  
Javier Nori ◽  
Octavio R. Rojas-Soto
Keyword(s):  
Conservation Areas ◽  
Dry Forests ◽  
Neotropical Dry Forests
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