Editorial Tropical Conservation Science: a first special issue
The current issue of Tropical Conservation Science is the first special issue published by TCS and it focuses on a very important group of mammals, the ungulates, in a megadiverse country in the Neotropics, Mexico [1]. The guest editors for this issue are Dr. Sonia Gallina and Dr. Salvador Mandujano...
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Format: | Text |
Language: | English |
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2009
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Online Access: | http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.570.698 http://tropicalconservationscience.mongabay.com/content/v2/09-05-25_editorial.pdf |
Summary: | The current issue of Tropical Conservation Science is the first special issue published by TCS and it focuses on a very important group of mammals, the ungulates, in a megadiverse country in the Neotropics, Mexico [1]. The guest editors for this issue are Dr. Sonia Gallina and Dr. Salvador Mandujano, research scientists at the Instituto de Ecologia, A.C. in Mexico. Drs. Gallina and Mandujano took the initiative in proposing, organizing and assembling the special issue. All papers in this special issue went through a peer-review process. To place the special issue in perspective, the following comments may be relevant. According to the Smithsonian Institution there are about 257 recognized species of ungulates world-wide [2]. Of these, at least five species have gone extinct in the last 300 years due to anthropogenic pressures, and many other species are of critical conservation concern [2]. Ungulates account for the vast majority of large herbivores currently on earth and their native range includes all zoogeographic regions except Antarctica [3]. With human help, ungulates have expanded also into many geographical regions in the globe and in others, where they had become extinct, they have been reintroduced, e.g., the horse in the American continent [4,5]. In the American continent there are 34 reported species of ungulates, representing 13 % of the ungulate species worldwide [6]. Eleven ungulate species are found in Mexico (one Perissodactyl species and ten Artiodactyl species), which correspond to 32 % and 4 % of ungulate species in America and worldwide, respectively [6]. |
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