Biogeographical patterns of endemic diversity and its conservation in Australia's artesian desert springs

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Rossini, RA
Fensham, RJ
Stewart-Koster, B
Gotch, T
Kennard, MJ
Griffith University Author(s)
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2018
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Abstract

Aim:

Springs in the Australian arid zone are distinct from other waterways because they house a large number of endemic species. We aimed to assess spatial patterns in endemic diversity at a basin‐wide scale and whether environmental features can help to explain them. In doing so, we take the opportunity to summarize the current state of conservation in the system. Location:

Great Artesian Basin (GAB), arid and semiarid regions of eastern Australia Methods:

We combine data regarding the location of springs with published GIS layers regarding environmental characteristics and a literature review of all species and subspecies documented in the published literature to be endemic to GAB springs. Results:

We found evidence of 96 species and subspecies of fishes, molluscs, crustaceans and plants endemic to these springs. The majority of endemic species are invertebrates with geographical distributions limited to a single spring complex (<61 km2). Endemic taxa are concentrated in 75 of the 326 spring complexes. Spring complexes with a large number of springs, high connectivity via drainage basins and low rainfall were more likely to contain endemic taxa, but environmental models were poor predictors of diversity. Only 24% spring complexes with high conservation value are within conservation reserves, and the majority of endemic species are unassessed under the IUCN and Australian conservation legislation, particularly the invertebrates.

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Diversity and Distributions

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24

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9

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© The Author(s) YEAR. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, providing that the work is properly cited.

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Environmental sciences

Conservation and biodiversity

Biological sciences

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