‘Design of a reserve network for protecting biodiversity in the southern regions of South America using predictive distribution models with hyperdiverse taxons’

Federico Ocampo, Guillermo Óscar Debandi, Gustavo Ernesto Flores Raymond, Joaquín Hortal Muñoz, Jorge Miguel Lobo, Marcelo Fabio Tognelli, Miguel Bastos Araújo, Sergio Alberto Roig Juñent.

Conservation needs to be well planned at regional level, including a network of reserves spanning the whole range of biota and connected by corridors. The best way to decide the spatial distribution of these resources is via a direct description of species distribution in certain hyperdiverse groups representing different life strategies (insects are especially useful for this task).

This information will facilitate the design of a reserve network that maximises the representation of each group within the protected spaces, while identifying areas of high migratory transit which act as biogeographic corridors between them, and should be integrated within the network.

The main objective of this project is to design a reserve network for the continent?s southern reaches (Chile and Argentina), using the data compiled on five insect groups to plot predictive maps of species distribution within the study area.