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MAMMALS AT THE CROSSROAD: PAST HISTORY, PRESENT STATUS AND THE FUTURE TRENDS OF IRAN MAMMALS

15 Nov 2017 - Gholam Hosein Yusefi (BIODESERTS, CIBIO-InBIO/UP) | November 24, 2017 | 15h30 | CIBIO-InBIO’s Auditorium, Campus de Vairão
MAMMALS AT THE CROSSROAD: PAST HISTORY, PRESENT STATUS AND THE FUTURE TRENDS OF IRAN MAMMALS

STUDENT SEMINAR IN BIODIVERSITY AND EVOLUTION

 

 

Understanding species' diversity and distribution is not only crucial for theoretical research in the fields of biogeography, systematics and ecology but also for applied research and conservation. This is especially important when we know that many species including mammals have experienced dramatic declines in population and range size worldwide. Lying on the crossroad of three main zoogeographic realms - the Palearctic, Saharo-Arabian, and Oriental, Iran is an area concentrating high mammal species richness and populations of endangered large mammals. In spite of this high diversity importance, we know remarkably little about many aspects of mammal diversity in this country. In this presentation, I will talk about my PhD project where we reviewed the taxonomy of 191 terrestrial species from 33 families at the subspecies level, and we mapped the geographical distribution of the targeted species by collecting and geo-referencing the historical and current species occurrence records (spanned the period 1758-2017) from all available sources. With the collected data we also i) identify mechanisms related to mammal decline (extinction risk drivers), ii) analyse biogeographical patterns, and iii) examine the potential impacts of climate change (especially drought) on the target species to predict future changes in their geographical distributions. The overall results from this study are expected to uncover some important aspects of diversity of mammals in Iran and work as a tool for guiding conservation planning and biodiversity management.

 

Gholam Hosein Yusefi holds a MSc in Ecology & Conservation Biology from Uppsala University. Currently, he is a PhD student in the BIODIV program, being supervised by José Carlos Brito (CIBIO-InBIO) and Kamran Safi (University of Konstanz) as part of the BIODESERTS group. His PhD project is focused on the Iran mammals’ diversity and distribution.

 

[Host: José Carlos Brito, Biodiversity of Deserts and Arid Regions]

 

Image credits: W.T. Blanford 1876; GH Yusefi

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