ASSESSING CONSERVATION PRIORITIES IN MEGADIVERSE MEXICO: MAMMALIAN DIVERSITY, ENDEMICITY, AND ENDANGERMENT

(Uploaded by Plazi for the Bat Literature Project) The identification of areas of high priority for conservation is becoming a major endeavor for conservation biologists. Regions of high species richness and high concentrations of endemic and endangered species have been considered a priority for conservation. In this paper we use information about the species richness, composition, and distribution of mammals from Mexico for selecting priority areas for conservation. All species of terrestrial mammals were characterized by geographic range size, body mass, and conservation status, and their distributions were overlaid on a 28 3 28 grid to detect areas of high concentrations of species richness, endemicity, and endangered species. We focused our analyses at both species and biogeographic levels.