Southern California. Photo credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, The SeaWiFS Project and ORBIMAGE, Scientific Visualization Studio

Protected areas most often encompass rare habitats, or “typical” exemplars of ecoregions and geomorphic provinces.  This approach focuses on current biodiversity, and typically ignores the evolutionary processes that control the gain and loss of biodiversity at other levels (e.g., genetic, ecological). 

In order to include evolutionary process in conservation planning efforts, its spatial components must first be identified and mapped.  We have developed a GIS-based approach for explicitly mapping patterns of genetic divergence and diversity for multiple species (a “Multi-species Genetic Landscape”, or MGL).  Using this approach, we analyzed 21 mitochondrial DNA datasets from vertebrate and invertebrate species in Southern California to identify areas with common phylogeographic breaks and high intralineage diversity. The result is an evolutionary framework for southern California within which genetic biodiversity can be analyzed in the context of historical processes, future evolutionary potential and current reserve design.

More information can be viewed at Finding Evolutionary Hotspots in Southern California for Conservation Planning. For more information, contact Amy Vandergast, Western Ecological Research Center.

Larger view

Like “mobile data recorders,” these horn snails in a salt marsh at Morro Bay, California, reflect in their complement of trematode parasites the predator-prey relationships occurring in the salt marsh during their lifetime. Photo credit: Kevin D. Lafferty, USGS

Scientists at the USGS Western Ecological Research Center and the University of California, Santa Barbara, are developing libraries of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I (COI) gene from easy-to-identify trematode cercariae to help in the identification of more difficult trematode stages by extracting DNA, Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) amplification and comparison with sequences from the libraries. By surveying the trematode parasite population in resident horn snails, a hub for more than 20 trematode species, whose lifestyle requires multiple sequential hosts, the scientists strive to develop trematodes as indicators of ecosystem health in estuaries along the Pacific Coast.

Read more about the parasite studies:

• Study Shows Parasites Outweigh Predators
• Parasites, the Thread of Food Webs?
• Biologists Count Parasites to Assess Health of Marsh

For more information contact Kevin D. Lafferty, Western Ecological Research Center.