Guest Post by Clinton Jenkins
The variety of life on Earth is not spread evenly, but is concentrated in very special places. SavingSpecies has been working to map the diversity of vertebrate life across the world and thereby identify the very best places where we can protect and restore the most biodiversity for the buck. These beautiful new maps, seen here for the first time, illustrate some of the intriguing patterns of life in the world. As well as being gorgeous images of life’s diversity, the maps help us use science to prioritize our conservation efforts.
Map 1. World map of color coded density of vertebrate species. (Click image for larger version.)
In our first view (Map 1), we see colors that indicate the highest concentrations of the number of animal species across the world’s land masses. Deep reds and yellows cover much of the tropics, indicating a huge number of species. The world’s high latitudes and its deserts are blue, indicating relatively low vertebrate diversity. We can see clear geographic and geological patterns in these maps of life.
In the globe below (Map 2), we take a closer look at biodiversity in the Americas. The deep reds of Amazonian diversity stretch west into the Andes, but as one crosses over the Andes and toward the Pacific coast, total diversity drops off rapidly into greens and blues.
Map 2. Color coded number of vertebrate species in the Americas. (Click for larger map.)
Map 3. South America showing color coded density of species of birds (left), mammals (middle), and amphibians (right). *For now, we can represent only the birds, mammals, and amphibians, because the reptiles and fish are still too poorly known to produce such detailed maps. (Click for larger map.)
However, from previous work we know that not all species are equally prone to extinction. Some animals have exceptionally small ranges, making them particularly vulnerable. It is these species and their homes that most concern us here at SavingSpecies. They are the low-hanging fruit for preventing extinction. But where are those species? Well, they are in the truly special places of the world. For birds, the Andes are simply unparalleled for their concentrations of rare birds (bright yellow and red streaks in Map 4). Within the Americas, only southeastern Brazil and parts of Central America come close to showing such concentrations of rare birds. Rare mammals are concentrated in much the same pattern.
Map 4. In the Andes, many endemic bird species are highly concentrated in narrow ranges. (Click for larger map.)
For amphibians, the concentration of these super-rare species is even more extreme. The map below (Map 5) shows how a handful of small regions in the Andes have exceptional concentrations of rare amphibians. In these and nearby regions scientists are discovering many new amphibians, just at the time when their habitats are disappearing faster than ever before. SavingSpecies’ newest project, in collaboration with Colombia’s The Hummingbird Conservancy, has identified such an area, near Medellin, in which nine new species of frogs were recently discovered.
Our project in southeast Brazil’s Atlantic forest is similarly focused on areas of high endemism, protecting species with very small ranges in our effort to prevent their extinction. Initial reports are that our Brazil project is meeting with considerable and earlier-than expected success. (Read my progress report from August 2011.) But that’s a topic for another blog post. For now, let’s just say that with this work, using such maps to identify areas with the most species at the highest risk of extinction, our donors’ dollars will save species.
Map 5. Color coded density of endemic and small-ranged amphibian species in South America shows the concentration of rare species. (Click for larger map.)
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Félix Pharand-Deschênes at Globaïa (http://globaia.org) for help in designing the biodiversity globes. Original data on the distributions of bird species are from BirdLife (BirdLife 2011) and for mammals and amphibians are from the IUCN (IUCN 2010), who distribute data from the Global Mammal and Global Amphibian Assessments. Threatened species are those considered vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered in the IUCN Red List.
SavingSpecies offers a unique way for you to help preserve biodiversity and to reduce your carbon footprint at the same time. We purchase degraded land in areas of the world's highest biodiversity. We then engage local communities to restore and protect the land. The trees we plant soak up carbon from the atmosphere. So when you help us buy land in high biodiversity areas you are reducing your carbon footprint and helping to preserve biodiversity! 
SavingSpecies was founded and is supported by the world's leading conservation biologists. We support our conservation decisions with the best scientific evidence. The science determines the highest priorities for preserving the world's biodiversity. Join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter, and feel free to contact us with your questions, thoughts and suggestions.
16 Comments
7:53 am
Luigi Guarino
Beautiful maps. Any chance of doing some of plants?
4:37 pm
Clinton Jenkins
Luigi,
We’re working on some data for plants too, but alas they are not as detailed as what can be done with vertebrates. There are about 300,000 plant species compared to 10,000 bird species, and probably not as many people studying them.
In the near future I do hope to post a more comprehensive look of the world’s biodiversity, both vertebrates and the many other components of life.
5:22 pm
Luigi
Thanks for the information, I look forward to seeing the results. What dataset will you use?
1:02 pm
Roger Harris
Luigi, Clinton is leaving for Brazil today. I’ll have him contact you as soon as possible. Thank you for your interest!
4:28 pm
Clinton Jenkins
It’s some work with a colleague, but I believe the original plant data come out of the Kew Gardens databases, or at least they were a lead in compiling the data from many institutions. We have some ant data too, and those were developed with a lot of people around the world. They were organized here at North Carolina State University by Benoit Guénard and others, although Benoit is now in Japan for a postdoc.
4:16 pm
Prasad R Attygalle
This is very interesting and commendable effort. I have no argument with Clinton for concentrating on the Amazon region since its one of the Mega Diversity regions. I would also like to suggest to have some partners from Indean Sub Continent, Indo-Malayan region (Borneo etc) and African Congoes to cover the other Mega Diversity regions in the World.
It is quite logical to map the Vertebrate regions and conserve those areas as priority regions since it will cover the test of flora & fauna. Subsequently we could look in to more specific localized regions.
The commenter is from Sri Lanka
9:04 pm
Clinton Jenkins
These maps are being made for the whole world. The Americas were the focus of the first blog post just so that I could be consistent across the maps and keep the posting small. Expect more coverage in the future!
3:30 am
Luciano Lima
The maps are really nice, but don’t you think that the labels are incorrect? It does not represent “density of ENDEMIC species” it represent “density of species”.
3:39 am
Roger Harris
Thanks Luciano for your sharp eyes! I will check with Clinton. Since I wrote the captions, any error would be mine. – Roger
2:33 pm
Clinton Jenkins
Indeed you are correct. We will get that fixed. Maps 1 and 3 are for all species, not just endemics. Maps 4 and 5 show small-ranged / endemic species.
3:05 pm
Roger Harris
Luciano, the captions have been corrected. Thank you again for the heads-up!
12:43 am
Peter L
Really stunning… I find myself really wishing for global endemism maps too. The global density map is great but it really undersells Madagascar, New Guinea, New Zealand etc. in biological importance. Perhaps even some combined endemism X species metric would be a better proxy for “biological importance.”
2:17 am
Sean Anderson
These are fantastic! Please keep up the great visualization work. Is there any chance we can get access to higher resolution versions for use in lectures? I project my slides on large overhead screens and need high res images for it to look good for my students. Thanks!
2:31 am
Roger Harris
Hello Sean, thank you for your kind words. I am passing your info on to Clinton, and he will be in touch viz. high res images. In the meantime, if you could share this post on Facebook, Twitter, your faculty page or anywhere else, we’d be very grateful!
1:51 pm
Clinton Jenkins
Hi Sean,
We’re working on it. The research and production of the maps is still a work in progress. The goal though is to have plenty of publicly available information to use. Keep an eye on the site and we’ll be posting more as it’s ready.
Clinton
4:29 pm
Thomas Gillespie
This is very interesting and really shows the importance of endangered taxa across spatial scales. Fantastic idea!