ABSTRACT
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 Mapping Biodiversity in Central America
Track:  Ecology, Conservation, and Archaeology
Author:   Vijay Aswani
Eldredge Bermingham
Measuring biodiversity of large areas, such as entire countries or regions, is a difficult and costly process. One largely untapped and potentially useful source of biodiversity information is museum collections databases. But how does one go from a large database of collection records to a succinct description of biodiversity? This paper describes a number of ArcView GIS scripts that use a museum database to generate biodiversity information such as species/area counts, species area curves, endemicity plots, and species contours representing Central American freshwater fish.

Vijay Aswani
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
Apartado 2072
Balboa,
Republic of Panama

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