Healy Hamilton

NatureServe

Background Seahorses, seadragons, pygmy pipehorses, and pipefishes (Syngnathidae, Syngnathiformes) are among the most recognizable groups of fishes because of their derived morphology, unusual life history, and worldwide distribution. Despite previous phylogenetic studies and recent new species descriptions of syngnathids, the evolutionary relation...

Continental- and regional-scale assessments of gaps in protected area networks typically use relatively coarse range maps for well documented species groups, creating uncertainty about the fate of unexamined biodiversity and providing insufficient guidance for land managers. By building habitat suitability models for a taxonomically diverse group o...

The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled “Progress on National Biodiversity Indicator Reporting and Prospects for Filling Indicator Gaps in Southeast Asia ” (Han et al., 2020). We examined quantifiable information about biodiversity indicators from the most recent two national reports (i.e., 4th in 2010 and 5t...

Data on Indicators used in Southeast Asian nations’ 4th and 5th National Reports to the Convention on Biological Diversity

A new species and the first confirmed record of a true pygmy seahorse from Africa, Hippocampus nalusp. nov. , is herein described on the basis of two specimens, 18.9–22 mm SL, collected from flat sandy coral reef at 14–17 meters depth from Sodwana Bay, South Africa. The new taxon shares morphological synapomorphies with the previously described cen...

The data presented in this article are related to the research article entitled “Progress on National Biodiversity Indicator Reporting and Prospects for Filling Indicator Gaps in Southeast Asia ” (Han et al., 2020). We examined quantifiable information about biodiversity indicators from the most recent two national reports (i.e., 4th in 2010 and 5t...

Observed ecological responses to climate change are highly individualistic across species and locations, and understanding the drivers of this variability is essential for management and conservation efforts. While it is clear that differences in exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity all contribute to heterogeneity in climate change vulnerab...

With tremendous biodiversity but increasing threats, Southeast Asia faces challenges in meeting its commitments to the Convention on Biological Diversity’s 2020 Aichi Targets. The use of indicators to monitor, evaluate and guide conservation progress is increasingly urgent. We quantified indicator use by 10 Southeast Asian governments in the 4th an...

Indicators are necessary to monitor national progress toward commitments made to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), but countries often struggle to mobilize quantitative indicators for many biodiversity targets. Assessing the extent to which countries are using measurable indicators from global and national sources by surveying 5th Natio...

Indicators are necessary to monitor national progress toward commitments made to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), but countries often struggle to mobilize quantitative indicators for many biodiversity targets. Assessing the extent to which countries are using measurable indicators from global and national sources by surveying 5th Natio...

Information on where species occur is an important component of conservation and management decisions, but knowledge of distributions is often coarse or incomplete. Species distribution models provide a tool for mapping habitat and can produce credible, defensible, and repeatable information with which to inform decisions. However, these models are...

We applied a framework to assess climate change vulnerability of 52 major vegetation types in the western United States to provide spatially-explicit input to adaptive management decisions. The framework addressed climate exposure and ecosystem resilience; the latter derived from analyses of ecosystem sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Measures of...

The taxonomic status of the seahorse Hippocampusprocerus Kuiter, 2001, type locality Hervey Bay, QLD, Australia, was re-examined based on its strong morphological similarity and geographical proximity to its congener H.whitei Bleeker, 1855, a species recorded in ten estuaries of New South Wales, Australia. Kuiter (2001) distinguished H.procerus fro...

The pygmy seahorse Hippocampus japapigu sp. n. is described based on three specimens, 13.9-16.3 mm SL, collected from a mixed soft coral and algae reef at 11 m depth at Hachijo-jima Island, Izu Islands, Japan. The new taxon shares morphological synapomorphies with the previously described central Indo-Pacific pygmy seahorses, H. colemani, H. pontoh...

Genetic distance analysis (uncorrected p distances) of COI sequence data from 21 specimens of H.pontohi and those referred to H.severnsi

NJ tree of COI sequences from 21 specimens of H.pontohi and those referred to H.severnsi

The family Syngnathidae is a large and diverse clade of morphologically unique bony fishes, with 57 genera and 300 described species of seahorses, pipefishes, pipehorses, and seadragons. They primarily inhabit shallow coastal waters in temperate and tropical oceans, and are characterized by a fused jaw, male brooding, and extraordinary crypsis. Phy...

Developing indicators for monitoring biodiversity, as called for by the Convention on Biological Diversity and 2020 Aichi Targets, is challenging in many countries due to data and capacity gaps. One proposed solution is to disaggregate global datasets to generate national-level indicators for countries where these values do not exist, but to date t...

The United States has achieved significant conservation goals to date, but the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem processes is accelerating. We evaluate opportunities and challenges to conserving our biodiversity by completing a national habitat conservation system, which could stem losses of natural resources and ecosystem services and proactively...

Pragmatic methods to assess the status of biodiversity at multiple scales are required to support conservation decision-making. At the intersection of several major biogeographic zones, Bolivia has extraordinary potential to develop a monitoring strategy aligned with the objectives of the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network...

Studies that model the effect of climate change on terrestrial ecosystems often use climate projections from downscaled Global Climate Models (GCMs). These simulations are generally too coarse to capture patterns of fine scale climate variation, such as the sharp coastal energy and moisture gradients associated with wind-driven upwelling of cold wa...

Species distribution modeling is widely applied to predict invasive species distributions and species range shifts under climate change. Accurate predictions depend upon meeting the assumption that ecological niches are conserved, i.e., spatially or temporally transferable. Here we present a multi-taxon comparative analysis of niche conservatism us...

Recognizing the imperiled status of biodiversity and its benefit to human well-being, the world's governments committed in 2010 to take effective and urgent action to halt biodiversity loss through the Convention on Biological Diversity's “Aichi Targets”. These targets, and many conservation programs, require monitoring to assess progress toward sp...

The US National Park System is significantly different – in scope, number of units, size and complexity – than in the 1960s when the Leopold Report. Scientific understanding of natural and cultural resources has expanded dramatically. Developments since the 1960s include increasing biodiversity loss, habitat fragmentation, land use change, groundwa...

In an effort to increase conservation effectiveness through the use of Earth observation technologies, a group of remote sensing scientists affiliated with government and academic institutions and conservation organizations identified 10 questions in conservation for which the potential to be answered would be greatly increased by use of remotely s...

Species distribution models (SDMs) are used to generate hypotheses regarding the potential distributions of species under different environmental conditions, such as forecasts of species range shifts in response to climate change and predictions of invasive species range expansions. However, an accurate description of species' geographic ranges as...

Our understanding of how species will respond to global change is still limited. Reasons hindering our ability to forecast species range shifts and expansions are the mismatch between realized climate niches in species’ native and invasive ranges, and the lack of available climatic datasets offering multiple scales of climatic variability (e.g., mo...

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) pose a significant threat to human health, economic stability, and biodiversity. Despite this, the mechanisms underlying disease emergence are still not fully understood, and control measures rely heavily on mitigating the impact of EIDs after they have emerged. Here, we highlight the emergence of a zoonotic Heni...