Biodiversity hotspots are areas of high priority for conservation (Reid 1998). They may be selected on the basis of their local species richness, degree of concentration of rare species (Prendergast et al. 1993) or the two measures combined with some assessment of urgency for conservation action (Myers et al. 2000). More targeted approaches identify " hotspots of complementarity " on the basis ...

Identification of global biodiversity hotspots is a leading conservation priority (Mittermayer et al. (1999) Hotspots. Conservation International, Washington, DC; Stein et al. (2000) Precious Heritage: The Status of Biodiversity in the United States. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK), but we know little about the nature and structure of such hotspots. Botanical richness in one recently ident...