{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03914590747330961, 'fraction_numerical': 0.027580071174377226, 'mean_word_length': 5.048387096774194, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Ecoregions in Ascendance: Reply to Jepson and Whittaker

In their essay, Jepson and Whittaker (2002 [this issue]) express three aims: (1) to place the World Wildlife Fund ( WWF ) ecoregions (Olson et al. 2001; Wikramanayake et al. 2001) in context with alternative systems for setting conservation priorities; (2) to express concern about the explicitness, transparency, and repeatability of the methods employed to define and delineate ecoregions; and (3) to ask whether the WWF ecoregions improve upon existing schemes of representing biodiversity (which they attempt to investigate by performing a qualitative test with Indonesia as a case study). Their essay contains a number of misrepresentations of our ecoregion approach. In the interest of brevity, we address only the major issues in this reply. We begin by arguing for the value of ecoregions, outlining the rationale behind the ecoregion framework and the delineation process, and comparing these with other efforts. The approach is detailed explicitly by Wikramanayake et al. (2001) and others ( Ricketts et al. 1999; Abell et al. 2000; Dinerstein et al. 2000).