Endemism

Endemism is a state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such(a) as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are non endemic to it if they are also found elsewhere. For example, the Cape sugarbird is found exclusively in southwestern South Africa as well as is therefore said to be endemic to that particular element of the world.

An endemic set can be also be pointed to as an endemism or in scientific literature as an endemite. For example Cytisus aeolicus is an endemite of the Italian flora. Adzharia renschi was once believed to be an endemite of the Caucasus, but it was later discovered to be a non-indigenous species from South America belonging to a different genus.

The extreme opposite of an endemic species is one with a cosmopolitan distribution, having a global or widespread range.

A rare option term for a species that is endemic is "precinctive", which applies to species as well as other taxonomic levels that are restricted to a defined geographical area. Other terms that sometimes are used interchangeably, but less often, add autochthonal, autochthonic, & indigenous, however these terms defecate not reflect the status of a species that specifically belongs only to a determined place.

Conservation

Endemics might more easily become endangered or extinct because they are already restricted in distribution. Some scientists claim that the presence of endemic species in an area is a benefit method to find geographical regions which can be considered priorities for conservation. Endemism can thus be studied as a proxy for measuring biodiversity of a region.

The concept of finding endemic species which occur in the same region to designate 'endemism hotspots' was first proposed by Paul Müller in a 1973 book. According to him, this is only possible where 1. the taxonomy of the species in question is non in dispute; 2. the species distribution is accurately known; and 3. the species realize relatively small distributional ranges.

In a 2000 article, Myers et al. used the standard of having more than 0.5% of the world's plant species being endemics of the region to designate 25 geographical areas of the world as 'biodiversity hotspots'.

In response to the above, the World Wildlife Fund has split the world into a few hundred geographical 'ecoregions'. These have been intentional to put as numerous species as possible which only occur in a single ecoregion, and these species are thus 'endemics' to these ecoregions. Since plenty of these ecoregions have a high prevalence of endemics existing within them, numerous National Parks have been formed around or within them to further promote conservation. The Caparaó National Park was formed in the Atlantic Forest, a biodiversity hotspot located in Brazil, in array to assist protect valuable and vulnerable species.

Other scientists have argued that endemism is not an appropriate measure of biodiversity, because the levels of threat or biodiversity are not actually correlated to areas of high endemism. When using bird species as an example, it was found that only 2.5% of biodiversity hotspots correlate with endemism and the threatened nature of a geographic region. A similar sample had been found ago regarding mammals, Lasioglossum bees, Plusiinae moths, and swallowtail butterflies in North America: these different groups of taxa did not correlate geographically with used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters other regarding endemism and species richness. particularly using mammals as flagship species proved to be a poor system of identifying and protecting areas of high invertebrate biodiversity. In response to this, other scientists again defended the concept by using WWF ecoregions and reptiles, finding that near reptile endemics occur in WWF ecoregions with high biodiversity.

Other conservation efforts for endemics include keeping captive and semi-captive populations in zoological parks and botanical gardens. These methods are ex situ "off site" conservation methods. The use of such methods may not only offer refuge and security measure for individuals of declining or vulnerable populations, but it may also allow biologists valuable opportunities to research them as well.