Use of databases for research and conservation of the Eastern Arc Mountains

Abstract

The establishment and use of computer databases to hold biological records is common in many countries. Such systems can accommodate a large volume of data with many potential uses, but many databases have failed due to poor design or programming, or to the lack of a proper user-need analysis. In all biological databases there are problems with the data being used. The most common problems are uneven collection effort, taxonomic confusion leading to unreliable records, difficulties with finding exact collection localities, differences in map projections leading to inaccurate record positions and more.
Data in databases, either the raw biological records, or interpreted/modelled range distributions, can be used for analyses of value to both conservationists and to academic biogeographers. However, all such analyses are highly influenced by the analytical scale, and results from one scale cannot be used at another. This is a fundamental problem with analyses using computerised data, especially for conservation planning. Data at different scales can be used to illustrate areas of high species richness, or areas where species of narrow distributional range congregate, although the results from one scale may not be applicable at another.
Computer programs can be used to select areas so that all species in the database are covered. The last method, using the principles of complementarity, is the most efficient way to select 'ideal' conservation areas. With such an analysis the theoretical minimum number of areas required to conserve all the species within a given database (e.g. all the birds in Sub-¬Saharan Africa) can be chosen. However, all such analyses are only indicative, as they do not take into consideration population viability, threats to the areas selected, or other 'real-world' variables that are important when conservation plans are being formulated.
For academics the patterns of species richness and range-restriction (i.e. endemism) can be used in large-scale models that can develop and test hypotheses to explain why species are distributed as they are and how evolution/extinction may have operated over time in order to produce the patterns observed. Such studies can have relevance to the development of conservation plans at the broad scale.


Journal of East African Natural History Vol. 87 (1&2) 1998: pp. 159-180