Biodiversity hotspot

A biodiversity hotspot is a biogeographic

region with significant levels of
biodiversity that is threatened with
humans.[1][2]

Norman Myers wrote about the concept in

two articles in “The Environmentalist”
(1988),[3] and 1990[4] revised after
thorough analysis by Myers and others
“Hotspots: Earth’s Biologically Richest and
Most Endangered Terrestrial Ecoregions”[5]
and a paper published in the journal
Nature.[6]

To qualify as a biodiversity hotspot on

Myers 2000 edition of the hotspot-map, a
region must meet two strict criteria: it
must contain at least 0.5% or 1,500
species of vascular plants as endemics,
and it has to have lost at least 70% of its
primary vegetation.[6] Around the world, 36
areas qualify under this definition.[7] These
sites support nearly 60% of the world's
plant, bird, mammal, reptile, and
amphibian species, with a very high share
of those species as endemics. Some of
these hotspots support up to 15,000
endemic plant species and some have lost
up to 95% of their natural habitat.[7]

Biodiversity hotspots host their diverse

ecosystems on just 2.3% of the planet's
surface,[8] however, the area defined as
hotspots covers a much larger proportion
of the land. The original 25 hotspots
covered 11.8% of the land surface area of
the Earth.[9] Overall, the current hotspots
cover more than 16% of the land surface
area, but have lost around 85% of their
habitat.[10] This loss of habitat explains
why approximately 60% of the world's
terrestrial life lives on only 2.3% of the land
surface area.
Hotspot conservation
initiatives
Only a small percentage of the total land
area within biodiversity hotspots is now
protected. Several international
organizations are working in many ways to
conserve biodiversity hotspots.

Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund

(CEPF) is a global program that provides
funding and technical assistance to
nongovernmental organizations and
participation to protect the Earth's
richest regions of plant and animal
diversity including: biodiversity hotspots,
high-biodiversity wilderness areas and
important marine regions.
The World Wide Fund for Nature has
derived a system called the "Global 200
Ecoregions", the aim of which is to
select priority Ecoregions for
conservation within each of 14
terrestrial, 3 freshwater, and 4 marine
habitat types. They are chosen for their
species richness, endemism, taxonomic
uniqueness, unusual ecological or
evolutionary phenomena, and global
rarity. All biodiversity hotspots contain
at least one Global 200 Ecoregion.
Birdlife International has identified 218
“Endemic Bird Areas” (EBAs) each of
which hold two or more bird species
found nowhere else. Birdlife
International has identified more than
11,000 Important Bird Areas[11] all over
the world.
Plant life International coordinates
several the world aiming to identify
Important Plant Areas.
Alliance for Zero Extinction is an
initiative of a large number of scientific
organizations and conservation groups
who co-operate to focus on the most
threatened endemic species of the
 world. They have identified 595 sites,
including a large number of Birdlife’ s
Important Bird Areas.
The National Geographic Society has
prepared a world map[12] of the hotspots
and ArcView shapefile and metadata for
the Biodiversity Hotspots[13] including
details of the individual endangered
fauna in each hotspot, which is available
from Conservation International.[14]

By the influence of that the central

government of india arrived a new
authority named CAMPA(compensatorry
afforestation fund management and
planning authority) to control the
destruction of forests and biological spots
in india

Distribution by region

Biodiversity hotspots. Original proposal in green, and

added regions in blue.

North and Central America

California Floristic Province •8•

 Madrean pine-oak woodlands •26•
Mesoamerica •2•
North American Coastal Plain •36•[15][16]

The Caribbean

Caribbean Islands •3•

South America

Atlantic Forest •4•

Cerrado •6•
Chilean Winter Rainfall-Valdivian Forests
•7•
Tumbes-Chocó-Magdalena •5•
Tropical Andes •1•

Europe
 Mediterranean Basin •14•

Africa

Cape Floristic Region •12•

Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa •10•
Eastern Afromontane •28•
Guinean Forests of West Africa •11•
Horn of Africa •29•
Madagascar and the Indian Ocean
Islands •9•
Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany •27•
Succulent Karoo •13•

Central Asia

Mountains of Central Asia •31•

South Asia

Eastern Himalaya, Nepal, India •32•

Indo-Burma, India and Myanmar •19•
Western Ghats and Sri Lanka •21•

South East Asia and Asia-Pacific

East Melanesian Islands •34•

New Caledonia •23•
New Zealand •24•
Philippines •18•
Polynesia-Micronesia •25•
Eastern Australian temperate forests
•35•
Southwest Australia •22•
 Sundaland and Nicobar islands of India
•16•
Wallacea •17•

East Asia

Japan •33•
Mountains of Southwest China •20•

West Asia

Caucasus •15•
Irano-Anatolian •30•

Critiques of "Hotspots"

The high profile of the biodiversity

hotspots approach has resulted in some
criticism. Papers such as Kareiva &
Marvier (2003)[17] have argued that the
biodiversity hotspots:

Do not adequately represent other forms

of species richness (e.g. total species
richness or threatened species
richness).
Do not adequately represent taxa other
than vascular plants (e.g. vertebrates, or
fungi).
Do not protect smaller scale richness
hotspots.
Do not make allowances for changing
land use patterns. Hotspots represent
regions that have experienced
 considerable habitat loss, but this does
not mean they are experiencing ongoing
habitat loss. On the other hand, regions
that are relatively intact (e.g. the
Amazon Basin) have experienced
relatively little land loss, but are
currently losing habitat at tremendous
rates.
Do not protect ecosystem services.
Do not consider phylogenetic
diversity.[18]

A recent series of papers has pointed out

that biodiversity hotspots (and many other
priority region sets) do not address the
concept of cost.[19] The purpose of
biodiversity hotspots is not simply to
identify regions that are of high
biodiversity value, but to prioritize
conservation spending. The regions
identified include some in the developed
world (e.g. the California Floristic
Province), alongside others in the
developing world (e.g. Madagascar). The
cost of land is likely to vary between these
regions by an order of magnitude or more,
but the biodiversity hotspot designations
do not consider the conservation
importance of this difference. However,
the available resources for conservation
also tend to vary in this way.
See also
Biodiversity
Conservation biology
Crisis Ecoregions
Ecoregions
Global 200
Hawaiian honeycreeper conservation
High-Biodiversity Wilderness Areas
Hope spot: biodiversity hotspots in the
open sea
Key Biodiversity Areas
Megadiverse countries
Protected Areas
Wilderness
References
1. "Biodiversity Hotspots in India" .
www.bsienvis.nic.in.
2. "Why Hotspots Matter" . Conservation
International.
3. Myers, N. The Environmentalist 8 187-
208 (1988)
4. Myers, N. The Environmentalist 10
243-256 (1990)
5. Russell A. Mittermeier, Norman Myers
and Cristina Goettsch Mittermeier,
Hotspots: Earth's Biologically Richest
and Most Endangered Terrestrial
Ecoregions, Conservation
 International, 2000 ISBN 978-968-
6397-58-1
6. Myers, Norman; Mittermeier, Russell
A.; Mittermeier, Cristina G.; da
Fonseca, Gustavo A. B.; Kent, Jennifer
(2000). "Biodiversity hotspots for
conservation priorities" (PDF). Nature.
403 (6772): 853–858.
doi:10.1038/35002501 . ISSN 0028-
0836 . PMID 10706275 .
7. www.cepf.net - Biodiversity Hotspots
Defined https://www.cepf.net/our-
work/biodiversity-hotspots/hotspots-
defined - Biodiversity Hotspots
Defined Check |url= value (help).
 Retrieved 2019-01-24. Missing or
empty |title= (help)
8. "Why Hotspots Matter" . Conservation
International.
9. "Biodiversity Hotspots in India" .
www.bsienvis.nic.in.
10. "Biodiversity Hotspots" . www.e-
education.psu.edu.
11. [1] Archived August 8, 2007, at the
Wayback Machine
12. "Conservation International" (PDF).
The Biodiversity Hotspots. 2010-10-07.
Archived from the original (PDF) on
2012-03-27. Retrieved 2012-06-22.
13. "Conservation International" . The
Biodiversity Hotspots. 2010-10-07.
Archived from the original on 2012-
03-20. Retrieved 2012-06-22.
14. "Resources" .
Biodiversityhotspots.org. 2010-10-07.
Archived from the original on 2012-
03-24. Retrieved 2012-06-22.
15. "North American Coastal Plain" .
Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund.
Retrieved 7 February 2019.
16. Noss, Reed F.; Platt, William J.; Sorrie,
Bruce A.; Weakley, Alan S; Means, D.
Bruce; Costanza, Jennifer; Peet, Robert
K. (2015). "How global biodiversity
 hotspots may go unrecognized:
lessons from the North American
Coastal Plain". Diversity and
Distributions. 21 (2): 236–244.
doi:10.1111/ddi.12278 .
17. Kareiva, P. and M. Marvier (2003)
Conserving Biodiversity Coldspots,
American Scientist, 91, 344-351.
18. Daru, Barnabas H.; van der Bank,
Michelle; Davies, T. Jonathan (2014).
"Spatial incongruence among hotspots
and complementary areas of tree
diversity in southern Africa". Diversity
and Distributions. 21 (7): 769–780.
doi:10.1111/ddi.12290 .
19. Possingham, H. and K. Wilson (2005)
Turning up the heat on hotspots,
Nature, 436, 919-920.

External links
A-Z of Areas of Biodiversity Importance:
Biodiversity Hotspots
Conservation International's Biodiversity
Hotspots project
African Wild Dog Conservancy's
Biodiversity Hotspots Project
Biodiversity hotspots in India
New biodiversity maps color-coded to
show hotspots

Further reading
 Dedicated issue of Philosophical
Transactions B on Biodiversity Hotspots.
Some articles are freely available.
Spyros Sfenthourakis, Anastasios
Legakis: Hotspots of endemic terrestrial
invertebrates in Southern Greece. Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 2001

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