3 research outputs found
Rare coral under the genomic microscope: timing and relationships among Hawaiian Montipora
Background
Evolutionary patterns of scleractinian (stony) corals are difficult to infer given the existence of few diagnostic characters and pervasive phenotypic plasticity. A previous study of Hawaiian Montipora (Scleractinia: Acroporidae) based on five partial mitochondrial and two nuclear genes revealed the existence of a species complex, grouping one of the rarest known species (M. dilatata, which is listed as Endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature - IUCN) with widespread corals of very different colony growth forms (M. flabellata and M. cf. turgescens). These previous results could result from a lack of resolution due to a limited number of markers, compositional heterogeneity or reflect biological processes such as incomplete lineage sorting (ILS) or introgression.
Results
All 13 mitochondrial protein-coding genes from 55 scleractinians (14 lineages from this study) were used to evaluate if a recent origin of the M. dilatata species complex or rate heterogeneity could be compromising phylogenetic inference. Rate heterogeneity detected in the mitochondrial data set seems to have no significant impacts on the phylogenies but clearly affects age estimates. Dating analyses show different estimations for the speciation of M. dilatata species complex depending on whether taking compositional heterogeneity into account (0.8 [0.05–2.6] Myr) or assuming rate homogeneity (0.4 [0.14–0.75] Myr). Genomic data also provided evidence of introgression among all analysed samples of the complex. RADseq data indicated that M. capitata colour morphs may have a genetic basis.
Conclusions
Despite the volume of data (over 60,000 SNPs), phylogenetic relationships within the M. dilatata species complex remain unresolved most likely due to a recent origin and ongoing introgression. Species delimitation with genomic data is not concordant with the current taxonomy, which does not reflect the true diversity of this group. Nominal species within the complex are either undergoing a speciation process or represent ecomorphs exhibiting phenotypic polymorphisms.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
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Global trends and biases in biodiversity conservation research
Efforts to conserve biodiversity have been hampered by long-standing biases, including a disproportionate focus on particular taxa and ecosystems with minimal attention to underlying genetic diversity. We assessed whether these biases have persisted over the past four decades by analyzing trends in 17,502 research articles published in four top conservation-focused journals. Overall, we found that historical biases in conservation biology research remain entrenched. Despite increasing numbers of conservation articles published each decade from 1980 to 2020, research effort has increasingly focused on the same suite of taxa. Surprisingly, some of the most-studied species in these conservation articles had low conservation risk, including several domesticated animals. Animals and terrestrial ecosystems are consistently over-represented while plants, fungi, and freshwater ecosystems remain under-represented. Strategically funding investigations of understudied species and ecosystems will ensure more effective conservation effort across multiple levels of biodiversity, alleviate impediments to biodiversity targets, and ultimately prevent further extinctions.
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•Biases in conservation research have not changed over time•Conservation research increasingly focuses on the same suite of species•Conservation status of a species does not seem to predict research attention•Targeted funding of understudied systems is necessary to even out research imbalance
While efforts to conserve biodiversity are increasing, research and conservation efforts are unequally allocated across different scales of biodiversity, with within-species diversity receiving the least overall attention. One potential solution is to realign funding priorities to promote efforts across different scales, from genetic to species to ecosystem. With limited funding, prioritization approaches seek to maximize impact by returning to ongoing conservation efforts or focusing on high-profile species. However, these approaches reinforce biases against more equitable allocation because a lack of knowledge about understudied groups can be seen as detrimental to conservation success and prohibitively expensive. This study shows that these biases in conservation research are long standing and still ongoing, which will ultimately lead to an uneven loss of biodiversity. Deliberate funding and targeted efforts are needed to investigate both understudied species and ecosystems.
Conservation biology research seems biased toward popular species and ecosystems, with seemingly little attention paid to within-species (genetic) diversity. By looking through thousands of conservation-focused research articles, we found that these biases have been notably consistent over the last four decades. We saw that some of the most-studied species have low conservation risk, and some are domesticated animals. Animals and terrestrial ecosystems are consistently over-represented while plants, fungi, and freshwater ecosystems remain under-represented