Country-based patterns of total species richness, endemicity, and threatened species richness in African rodents and insectivores

Country-based patterns of total species richness, endemicity, and threatened species richness in African rodents and insectivores are studied in this paper. We found several patterns which were similar between insectivores and rodents. Indeed, in both groups we observed: (i) a significantly uneven distribution of species richness across countries and geographic regions with highest species richness peaks being in Middle Africa and lowest peaks in Northern Africa, (ii) species richness increasing with rainfall but being independent on a country's surface area, (iii) in each country, the insectivore total species richness and endemic species richness increases were positively correlated with rodent total species richness and endemic species richness increases. However, number of endemics peaked in South Africa and D. R. Congo in both groups, but also in Tanzania for Insectivores and in Ethiopia for rodents. In addition, the highest numbers of threatened species occurred in D. R. Congo, Rwanda and Uganda for rodents and in South Africa, Tanzania and Cameroon for insectivores. The conservation implications of these results were discussed. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.