Tesorero, Mary Ann

BIO 3YB-1

Assignment 4:
The Philippines as the center of center of fish biodiversity

The paper The Center of the Center of Marine Shore Fish Biodiversity: The
Philippine Island, aims to justify IMPA’s the results of a GIS study of marine species
found in the western central Pacific Ocean by explaining the 4 category hypotheses.
Though this literature is about the Philippines the paper were actually written by
foreign peoples. The different hypothesis put forth to explain the astounding diversity
found in the IMPA can be tested by locating the center of marine biodiversity. The
study reveals that Philippines has more areas of concentrated allopatric speciation
than Wallacea. The Philippines may harbor a considerable excess of coral reef species
and widely dispersed IndoPacific species, indicating that this area may be a major
source of variety. IMPA was a center of origin based on apparent dissemination to
marginal areas far from an IMPA center of endemism is also compatible with a
Philippine center of origin according to recent evidences.There are other
diversification hubs in the study, besides the Philippine and northern Sumatra regions.
The researchers also saw a pattern in their analysis focusing on the diversity's alleged
marginal hotspots on the Australian and Eurasian tectonic plates. In southeast
Queensland, close to the Great Barrier Reef, the richness of endemic species to the
Australian plate reaches its highest point. This top in the area where temperate and
tropical faunas meet is thought to be diversity.The idea that a Philippine major center
of allopatric beginnings offers the elusive unifying explanation to explain IMPA
biodiversity may be supported or refuted through comparative phylogeography, a
type of vicariance biogeography. However doing this needs extensive taxonomic
analyzation unfortunately the researchers have no idea where to get data due to the
reason that taxonomists were became unsupported despite their importance to
specification of species. The researchers recommendation to justify the study more is
to continue the paper and rely on taxonomic database.

Reading the paper got me into thinking that this kind of research is significant
not only to the marine biodiversity but also to the geographical history of our marine
territory also one of my realization while reading the paper thoroughly is that
biologist are under appreciated; This kind of study emphasize the abundance of our
marine biodiversity that we should conserve. Today I learned that there's so much I
have to learn that there's so much in this course I have to process so I can fully grasp
the importance of conservation. It is obvious that the Philippines' maritime
conservation efforts deserve special attention. The habitats and diversity that can aid
in our understanding of the evolutionary processes that control biodiversity in the
maritime domain. Adding to the conservation movement I hope that in the near
future more Filipino’s must look into this study and continue it to protect our marine
environment.