An award is made to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in support of a project will produce a complete list of the aquatic animal species of the Alto Purús National Park, a poorly known and vulnerable region of tropical rainforest in the Peruvian Amazon. The main goals are: (1) Discovery of species new to science; (2) research and teaching collections deposited in museums of natural history; (3) internet and printed field guides with illustrated identification keys, photographs and associated databases; (4) data for testing hypotheses on the origins and maintenance of species in a complex tropical ecosystem; and (5) a long term biodiversity monitoring plan.
This project will coordinate efforts of scientists from North and South America and Europe, provide multiple student training opportunities, and advance knowledge of the biodiversity a region with rich but threatened biological resources. Undergraduate and graduate students will be trained in advanced methods of molecular and morphological analysis. The approximately 6,000 species of Neotropical fishes represent over half of the world's freshwater fishes, and about 10% of all vertebrate species. The results of this detailed species-level inventory will directly address hypotheses on the origins and maintenance of species-rich tropical aquatic faunas, and help illuminate the structure of Amazonian aquatic diversity. The Office of International Science and Engineering is assisting in funding this award in recognition of the strong international collaboration and international experience for US students.
NSF-0741450 supported the first aquatic faunal survey and inventory of the Alto Purús National Park, a remote wilderness area located in the Fitzcarrald region of southeastern Peru (Figure 1). The Peruvian Amazon has one of the highest concentrations of aquatic biodiversity in the world, with almost 1,000 fish species currently known, and more described every year. Almost nothing is known of other aquatic animals in this region. Four project expeditions were completed from 2008 to 2011 by the six senior investigators with particpation by an additional 17 scientific colleagues and students. These collections resulted in over 2,150 cataloged museum lots from 87 field localities with more than 400 species in five phyla. Images and collection data are served at a publically available website at the University of Louisiana (Figure 2). Scientific results of this project are summarized in 46 publications, including popular and educational outlets (e.g. Albert and Crampton, 2010; Albert et al. 2011) and the book Fishes of the Fitzcarrald, Peruvian Amazon (Albert et al. 2012). Results of this project contributed to three doctoral, and six masters, and four undergraduate university thesis projects. This project provided the most complete record of aquatic animal diversity in the Fitzcarrald region to date. These results will be useful to zoologists, ecologists, biogogeographers, and aquatic resource managers working throughout greater Amazonia. The results of this study also contributed to our understanding of the origins of tropical biodiversity. Neotropical freshwaters attain among the highest animal species richness and density values of any region of comparable size on Earth, with current estimates of > 5,600 fish species inhabiting < 12% of the world’s land surface area, and < 0.002% of the world’s total liquid water supply. This study was designed to help understand how so many species can co-exist in such a small amount of total habitat space. The Fitzcarrald Arch in southeastern Peru is a region of low-elevation upland (200-350 m above sea level) rainforest in the Western Amazon that straddles the headwaters of four large Amazonian tributaries. All measures of species diversity in this region are elevated, with high alpha diversity (many species coexisting in the same locality), high beta diversity (high turnover between habitats), and high gamma diversity (high turnover between adjacent basins). Species richness – the number of distinct evolutionary lineages – is a fundamental measure of overall biodiversity. Species are basic structural and functional units of ecology and evolution. Accurate species identification is necessary to document genetic, physiological, and ecological aspects of biodiversity. Recognizing and naming species matters, no matter how subtle the differences may seem to the human eye. By comparing genetic divergence times among fish in several river basins, we were able to demonstrate that the fish diversity of the Fitzcarrald region accumulated over a lengthy geological history of millions of years, and from groups that originated over a broad geographic scale of the Amazon basin as a whole (Figure 3). In other words, the Fitzcarrald fish fauna did not originate quickly as the result of a localized or recent adaptive radiation. These results confirm those of many other studies demonstrating the great antiquity of tropical biodiversity, and how many species of tropical aquatic animals are geographically restricted and ecologically fragile. References: Albert, J. S., and W. G. R. Crampton. 2010. The geography and ecology of diversification in Neotropical freshwaters. Nature Knowledge 1:13-19. Albert, J. S., T. Carvalho, P. Petry, M. A. Holder, E. Maxime, J. Espino, I. Corahua, R. Quispe, B. Rengifo, H. Ortega, R. E. Reis. 2011. Aquatic biodiversity in the Amazon: habitat specialization and geographic isolation promote species richness. Animals 1: 205-241. Albert, J. S., T. P. Carvalho, J. A. Chuctaya, P. Petry, R. E. Reis, B. Rengifo, and H. Ortega. 2012. Fishes of the Fitzcarrald, Peruvian Amazon. Lulu Press, Raleigh, 251 pp. ISBN: 978-1-105-25484-0.
