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High endemism of cacti remains unprotected in the Caatinga

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Abstract

Protected areas are one of the main strategies of biodiversity conservation. However, if these areas do not coincide spatially with priority areas for conservation, they may not fully achieve their objective. Cactaceae is one of the most frequent plant families in the drylands of the neotropical region, but also one of the most threatened. Our objective was to understand whether the protected areas in the Brazilian semiarid region (Caatinga) include hotspots of the Cactaceae family. For this, we used distribution models of 81 species to calculate the corrected weighted endemism index (CWEI) and compared it with the size and location of 160 protected areas that currently exist in the region. Our results show that 4.7% of the area with the highest CWEI occur within protected areas, especially in those with fully protected status (the highest protection level according to Brazilian legislation, which is equivalent to IUCN categories I to III). However, 99.3% (75,758 km²) of the summed protected areas have a low or very low CWEI, and only 0.7% (532 km²) have a high or very high CWEI. These results suggest the importance of reassessing priority areas for in situ conservation of Cactaceae in the Caatinga region.

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Data Availability

and material.

The supplementary data is provided in electronic online resources accompanying the manuscript. Further details available in Figshare (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.15175515).

Code Availability

The codes are available in Github (https://github.com/CarvalhoResearch/Protect_Endemism_Cacti.git).

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Funding

This study was financed in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES) - Finance Code 001; The Fundação Cearense de Apoio Científico e Tecnológico (FUNCAP) provided a master’s scholarship to C. E. Carvalho. Furthemore, the National Institute of Science and Technology in Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Studies in Ecology and Evolution (INCT IN-TREE) and the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) granted a scholarship to F. S. Araújo.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Course of Ecology and Natural Resources, Department of Biology, Campus of Pici, Federal University of Ceará, 60440-900, Fortaleza-CE, Brazil

    Carlos E. Carvalho¹, Francisca S. Araújo & Júlia C. Sfair

  2. ²Education Department, Campus of Fortaleza, Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Ceará, 60040-531, Fortaleza-CE, Brazil

    Marcelo O. T. Menezes

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  1. Carlos E. Carvalho¹
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  2. Marcelo O. T. Menezes
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  3. Francisca S. Araújo
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Contributions

C. E. Carvalho, J. C. Sfair designed the study. C. E. Carvalho obtained the models and the computational framework and analyzed the data. J. C. Sfair, F. S. Araújo and M. T. O Menezes supervised the analyzes and contributed to the interpretation of the results. All authors contributed to the writing of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Carlos E. Carvalho¹.

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Carvalho¹, C.E., Menezes, M.O.T., Araújo, F.S. et al. High endemism of cacti remains unprotected in the Caatinga. Biodivers Conserv 31, 1217–1228 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-022-02384-y

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