Dataset Information

Ranking Mammal Species for Conservation and the Loss of Both Phylogenetic and Trait Diversity.

ABSTRACT: The 'edge of existence' (EDGE) prioritisation scheme is a new approach to rank species for conservation attention that aims to identify species that are both isolated on the tree of life and at imminent risk of extinction as defined by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). The self-stated benefit of the EDGE system is that it effectively captures unusual 'unique' species, and doing so will preserve the total evolutionary history of a group into the future. Given the EDGE metric was not designed to capture total evolutionary history, we tested this claim. Our analyses show that the total evolutionary history of mammals preserved is indeed much higher if EDGE species are protected than if at-risk species are chosen randomly. More of the total tree is also protected by EDGE species than if solely threat status or solely evolutionary distinctiveness were used for prioritisation. When considering how much trait diversity is captured by IUCN and EDGE prioritisation rankings, interestingly, preserving the highest-ranked EDGE species, or indeed just the most threatened species, captures more total trait diversity compared to sets of randomly-selected at-risk species. These results suggest that, as advertised, EDGE mammal species contribute evolutionary history to the evolutionary tree of mammals non-randomly, and EDGE-style rankings among endangered species can also capture important trait diversity. If this pattern holds for other groups, the EDGE prioritisation scheme has greater potential to be an efficient method to allocate scarce conservation effort.

SUBMITTER: Redding DW

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4668038 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Ranking Mammal Species for Conservation and the Loss of Both Phylogenetic and Trait Diversity.

Redding David W DW Mooers Arne O AO

PloS one 20151202 12

The 'edge of existence' (EDGE) prioritisation scheme is a new approach to rank species for conservation attention that aims to identify species that are both isolated on the tree of life and at imminent risk of extinction as defined by the World Conservation Union (IUCN). The self-stated benefit of the EDGE system is that it effectively captures unusual 'unique' species, and doing so will preserve the total evolutionary history of a group into the future. Given the EDGE metric was not designed t ...[more]

PMID: 26630179

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundClimate change is already affecting the distributions of many species and may lead to numerous extinctions over the next century. Small-range species are likely to be a special concern, but the extent to which they are sensitive to climate is currently unclear. Species distribution modeling, if carefully implemented, can be used to assess climate sensitivity and potential climate change impacts, even for rare and cryptic species.Methodology/principal findingsWe used species distribution modeling to assess the climate sensitivity, climate change risks and conservation implications for a threatened small-range mammal species, the Iberian desman (Galemys pyrenaicus), which is a phylogenetically isolated insectivore endemic to south-western Europe. Atlas data on the distribution of G. pyrenaicus was linked to data on climate, topography and human impact using two species distribution modeling algorithms to test hypotheses on the factors that determine the range for this species. Predictive models were developed and projected onto climate scenarios for 2070-2099 to assess climate change risks and conservation possibilities. Mean summer temperature and water balance appeared to be the main factors influencing the distribution of G. pyrenaicus. Climate change was predicted to result in significant reductions of the species' range. However, the severity of these reductions was highly dependent on which predictor was the most important limiting factor. Notably, if mean summer temperature is the main range determinant, G. pyrenaicus is at risk of near total extinction in Spain under the most severe climate change scenario. The range projections for Europe indicate that assisted migration may be a possible long-term conservation strategy for G. pyrenaicus in the face of global warming.Conclusions/significanceClimate change clearly poses a severe threat to this illustrative endemic species. Our findings confirm that endemic species can be highly vulnerable to a warming climate and highlight the fact that assisted migration has potential as a conservation strategy for species threatened by climate change.

Project description:Understanding the influences of dispersal limitation and environmental filtering on the structure of ecological communities is a major challenge in ecology. Insight may be gained by combining phylogenetic, functional and taxonomic data to characterize spatial turnover in community structure (?-diversity). We develop a framework that allows rigorous inference of the strengths of dispersal limitation and environmental filtering by combining these three types of ?-diversity. Our framework provides model-generated expectations for patterns of taxonomic, phylogenetic and functional ?-diversity across biologically relevant combinations of dispersal limitation and environmental filtering. After developing the framework we compared the model-generated expectations to the commonly used "intuitive" expectation that the variance explained by the environment or by space will, respectively, increase monotonically with the strength of environmental filtering or dispersal limitation. The model-generated expectations strongly departed from these intuitive expectations: the variance explained by the environment or by space was often a unimodal function of the strength of environmental filtering or dispersal limitation, respectively. Therefore, although it is commonly done in the literature, one cannot assume that the strength of an underlying process is a monotonic function of explained variance. To infer the strength of underlying processes, one must instead compare explained variances to model-generated expectations. Our framework provides these expectations. We show that by combining the three types of ?-diversity with model-generated expectations our framework is able to provide rigorous inferences of the relative and absolute strengths of dispersal limitation and environmental filtering. Phylogenetic, functional and taxonomic ?-diversity can therefore be used simultaneously to infer processes by comparing their empirical patterns to the expectations generated by frameworks similar to the one developed here.

Dataset Information

Ranking Mammal Species for Conservation and the Loss of Both Phylogenetic and Trait Diversity.

Publications

Ranking Mammal Species for Conservation and the Loss of Both Phylogenetic and Trait Diversity.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets