Mammalian diversity in climatic domains for Tehuacán-Cuicatlán Biosphere Reserve, Mexico

Abstract

The Tehuacán-Cuicatlán biosphere reserve (BRTC) is rich in mammalian diversity, but geographical distribution information is absent or insufficient for most species. Consequently, previous efforts to model the ecological niche and potential distribution of mammals have been hampered. The main purpose of this study was to examine the patterns of mammalian diversity in BRTC using a climatic domains classification. Biological datasets composed of geographically referenced localities commonly are raw input during analyses of geographical distributions of species, but in countries like Mexico datasets frequently are incomplete and biased. The recent availability of interpolators and geographic information systems make possible the enhancement of environmental datasets and open the possibility to use climatic parameters to explain biological patterns. In this study we generated a climatic domain classification for the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán valley and its surrounding areas of influence. With this approach, climatic domains were used as biodiversity surrogates, and we justified the overlapping of environmental data with the biological dataset (species, longitude, latitude, and elevation) to evaluate and complement the available mammal diversity information within BRTC.