Safeguarding Imperiled Biodiversity and Evolutionary Processes in the Wallacea Center of Endemism.

ABSTRACT: Wallacea-the meeting point between the Asian and Australian fauna-is one of the world's largest centers of endemism. Twenty-three million years of complex geological history have given rise to a living laboratory for the study of evolution and biodiversity, highly vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures. In the present article, we review the historic and contemporary processes shaping Wallacea's biodiversity and explore ways to conserve its unique ecosystems. Although remoteness has spared many Wallacean islands from the severe overexploitation that characterizes many tropical regions, industrial-scale expansion of agriculture, mining, aquaculture and fisheries is damaging terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, denuding endemics from communities, and threatening a long-term legacy of impoverish

SUBMITTER: Struebig MJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9618277 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature