T. Kontula

In 2014, the International Union for Conservation of Nature adopted the Red List of Ecosystems (IUCN RLE) criteria as the global standard for assessing risks to terrestrial, marine, and freshwater ecosystems. Identifying and quantifying the impacts of biodiversity assessments on the status of nature is key to justifying continued investment in assessments and enabling strategic planning to maximize future impact. In this policy perspective, we use an established impact evaluation framework to identify the impacts of the IUCN RLE since its inception. To date, 1,397 ecosystem units in 100 countries have been assessed following the IUCN RLE protocol. Systematic assessments are complete or underway in more than 25 countries and two continental regions (the Americas and Europe). Countries with established ecosystem red lists have already used them to inform legislation, land-use planning, protected area expansion, monitoring and reporting, and ecosystem management. IUCN RLE indices based...

In the ancient Lake Baikal in East Siberia, cottoid fishes have diversified into an endemic flock of 33 species. From an ancestral shallow-water, benthic life-style, Baikalian cottoids have shifted to deep-water life in environments even below 1500 m, and also colonized the pelagic habitat. We examined phylogenetic relationships among 22 Baikalian and 10 extra-Baikalian cottoid taxa using a total of 2822 bp of mitochondrial DNA sequence, from complete sequences of ATPase 8 and 6 and cytochrome b genes and the control region. Unlike in earlier studies, we found strong support for a monophyly of the whole endemic Baikalian cottoid diversity. The Baikalian clade, currently assigned to three families and 12 genera, appears to be nested within the Holarctic freshwater genus Cottus. In the molecular phylogeny, all but one of the current Baikalian genera formed well-supported monophyletic groups. However, the topology was inconsistent with the present morphology-based familial subdivision; particularly in positioning the genus Batrachocottus of Cottidae within Abyssocottidae. The branching order of the Baikalian genera could not be resolved completely, however; short basal branches indicate rapid diversification early in the history of the species flock. Using synonymous divergence rates from other fish species for calibration, the diversification of the Baikalian cottoids seems to have started in the Pliocene or early Pleistocene.

The relationships among Myoxocephalus quadricornis complex fish from Arctic coastal waters and from 'glacial relict' populations in Nearctic and Palearctic postglacial lakes were assessed using mtDNA sequence data (1978 bp). A principal phylogeographical split separated the North American continental deepwater sculpin (M. q. thompsonii) from a lineage of the Arctic marine and North European landlocked populations of the fourhorn sculpin (M. q. quadricornis). The North American continental invasion took place several glaciation cycles ago in the Early-to-Middle Pleistocene (0.9% sequence divergence); the divergence of the European and Arctic populations was somewhat later (0.5% divergence). The Nearctic-Palearctic freshwater vicariance in Myoxocephalus, however, appears clearly younger than in similarly distributed 'glacial relict' crustacean taxa; the phylogeographical structure is more similar to that in other northern Holarctic freshwater fish complexes.

Three major phylogeographic lineages of the cottid fish Cottus gobio (bullhead) were identified in northern Europe from mitochondrial DNA sequences and allozyme data. The largely separate freshwater distributions of the lineages demonstrate distinct postglacial colonization histories. West of the Baltic Sea, Swedish lakes were invaded from the southwest (Germany). Another, eastern lineage has colonized the inland waters northeast and east of the Baltic, from refugia in northwest Russia; this lineage comprises a distinct subgroup found only from Estonia. The third lineage, found south and southeast of the Baltic, probably descended from rivers draining to the Black Sea from the north (e.g. Dnepr). In coastal waters of the Baltic Sea, and in near-coast inland waters, the lineages are now found intermixed in various combinations. The alternating fresh- and saltwater phases of the Baltic basin have variously enabled and disabled the use of coastal waters as colonization routes. Hypotheses on the chronology of dispersal and lineage mixing can be based on the distribution of the marker genes and the paleohydrographical record. The diversity of the Fennoscandian bullhead thus comprises anciently diverged (probably mid-Pleistocene) refugial lineages that in their freshwater range constitute distinct evolutionarily significant units. The thorough mixing of the various genomic origins in and around the Baltic, however, refutes the controversial view of distinct species status for the western and eastern ('Cottus koshewnikowi') bullheads. The postglacial contact of the lineages has created new diversity that cannot be interpreted in a conventional hierarchical framework of taxonomic or conservation units.

ABSTRACT From morphogical and molecular data we reconsider the systematic composition of the Lake Baikal amphipod genus Babr Kamaltynov & Väinölä (Pallaseidae), until recently part of Pallasea Bate. The morphology of Babr is relatively uniform, but both allozyme and mitochondrial DNA data recognize a deep split into two lineages (, Nei’s D = 1.1uncorrected COI sequence divergence 17 % ). These correspond with the two species B. baikali (Stebbing) and B. nigromaculatus (Dorogostaisky), which both are found to be widespread throughout the lake but show different depth preferences. We found no support for the third proposed taxon B. inermis (Sowinsky), and consider it a synonym of B. baikali. Revised morphological diagnoses for the genus and the two species are presented, including new morphological characters. In terms of mtDNA, B. baikali is further subdivided into clearly separate geographical lineages, for which no morphological correspondence was however established.