Viernes 20 de abril 2012, 12:05 a 13h. Salón de Actos. Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid.
This lecture will be held in English.
Speaker: Lucas Joppa, Microsoft Research - Computational Ecology of Cambridge
For most organisms, the number of described species considerably underestimates how many exist. Even well-known groups such as terrestrial vertebrates are yielding recent discoveries. This is itself a problem and causes secondary complications given present high rates of species extinction. I will briefly summarise estimates for major taxa, the methods used to obtain them, and future prospects. From there I will move to discuss estimating where these species are likely to be found. Given that global conservation priorities are based on numbers of known species, addressing the question "how different would conservation priorities be if the catalog were complete?" is a hugely important question. Finally, I will address just how effective we actually are at conserving these species and their habitats. Overall, the results I will show leave global conservation priorities more or less intact, but suggest considerably higher levels of species imperilment than previously acknowledged, and lower conservation effectiveness. I will take this forward to discuss what can learned to improve conservation outcomes.
Lucas Joppa works on testing the impacts and effectiveness of conservation interventions and the complexity of species interactions among other research areas.
More info here: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/lujoppa/
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