Biodiversity Hot Spots: Top 10 sea locales make sobering list
For the first time, biologists have identified the world’s most vulnerable coral reefs. Each so-called hot spot is a marine region rife with organisms found nowhere else and threatened by human influence.
The 10 hot spots “represent very high priorities for conservation because they contain a disproportionately large fraction of the world’s biological heritage,” says Callum Roberts of the University of York in England. “By targeting these places rapidly, we could save far more species than if we invested the same amount in conservation in other places.”