Hey it's the leaf tailed Gecko again!

A study out of UC Berkeley in the journal Science this week provides new techniques for identifying the best regions to conserve within Madagascar - itself a biodiversity hotspot.

Madagascar, like other globally recognized biodiversity hot spots, has complex spatial patterns of endemism that differ among taxonomic groups, creating challenges for the selection of within-country priorities. We show, in an analysis of wide taxonomic and geographic breadth and high spatial resolution, that multitaxonomic rather than single-taxon approaches are critical for identifying areas likely to promote the persistence of most species.

This is of great importance because Madagascar has a goal of tripling the land area under protection, and it is important that these areas are selected as wisely as possible.

There's a nice report at the Berkeley website and the Science article is here. This ties in with a whole bunch of topics we have or will talk about so this one is definitely worth a look. It's also the cover story for Science this week.