0000000001332101
AUTHOR
Neftalí Sillero
Unravelling biodiversity, evolution and threats to conservation in the Sahara-Sahel
Deserts and arid regions are generally perceived as bare and rather homogeneous areas of low diversity. The Sahara is the largest warm desert in the world and together with the arid Sahel displays high topographical and climatic heterogeneity, and has experienced recent and strong climatic oscillations that have greatly shifted biodiversity distribution and community composition. The large size, remoteness and long-term political instability of the Sahara-Sahel, have limited knowledge on its biodiversity. However, over the last decade, there have been an increasing number of published scientific studies based on modern geomatic and molecular tools, and broad sampling of taxa of these region…
Improving the accuracy of small vertebrate-based palaeoclimatic reconstructions derived from the Mutual Ecogeographic Range. A case study using geographic information systems and UDA-ODA discrimination methodology
Abstract Understanding past climate and the mechanisms of climate change remain major challenges in scientific research. The Mutual Ecogeographic Range (MER) method for climatic reconstruction uses the current geographical distribution of fossil assemblages to infer palaeoclimatic conditions. Current species distributions used in the MER method are usually obtained from biogeographic atlases that record the absence/presence of species in a 10 × 10 km grid. A 10 × 10 km area is quite broad and the method only records presence/absence, without considering the real area occupied by any given species. Thus, the method overlooks the fact that environmental heterogeneity is strongly related to to…
Remote Sensing for biodiversity studies of very high spatial resolution
Remote Sensing (RS) is currently one of most important tool for Earth Observation. Many biodiversity and conservation studies depend on RS imagery and techniques as main source of environmental data. However, data are often limited to the available satellite imagery. In the case of local studies, satellite imagery frequently lacks adequate spatial or temporal resolution. Drones can provide valuable data with very high spatial resolution. However, when study areas are very small, even drones are not a good solution. Here, we present a study case where we modelled the distribution of several individuals of lizards using a simple camera attached to a stick and a matrix of temperature/humidity …