Abstract
Although there is growing interest in safeguarding the Tree of Life to preserve the human benefits that are directly provided by biodiversity, their evolutionary distribution remains unknown, which has hampered our understanding of the potential of phylodiversity indicators to evince them. Here, I drew on a global review of plant benefits and comprehensive phylogenetic information to breakdown their evolutionary distribution and thereby show why the commonly used Phylogenetic Diversity and Evolutionary Distinctiveness indicators can unequivocally help to preserve these natural services. Beneficial species clumped within phylogenetically overdispersed genera and closely related species often contributed very few and redundant benefits, suggesting that multiple plant lineages are required to maintain a wide variety of services. Yet, a reduced number of species stood out as multi-beneficial and evolutionarily distinct plants relative to both the entire phylogeny and the subset of beneficial species, and they collectively contributed a higher-than-expected number of records for most types of benefits. In addition to providing a clear mechanistic understanding for the recently proved success of Phylogenetic Diversity in capturing plant benefits, these findings stress the decisive role that conservation programmes aimed at protecting evolutionarily distinct taxa will play in safeguarding the beneficial potential of biodiversity for the future.
Highlights
There is growing interest in safeguarding the Tree of Life to preserve the human benefits that are directly provided by biodiversity, their evolutionary distribution remains unknown, which has hampered our understanding of the potential of phylodiversity indicators to evince them
It is important to note that the success of phylodiversity indicators in capturing known biodiversity benefits will rely on the exact distribution of the latter in the phylogeny, a gap of knowledge that remains largely unexplored besides a few local accounts[18,19]
I drew on a global review of plant services (15,834 records sorted across 25 standard types of b enefits20), comprehensive phylogenetic information, and analytical methods borrowed from the eco-phylogenetic literature to breakdown their evolutionary distribution and thereby show why the Phylogenetic Diversity (PD) and Evolutionary Distinctiveness (ED) indicators are empirically trustable means to safeguard known plant benefits beyond long argued theoretical e xpectations[11]
Summary
There is growing interest in safeguarding the Tree of Life to preserve the human benefits that are directly provided by biodiversity, their evolutionary distribution remains unknown, which has hampered our understanding of the potential of phylodiversity indicators to evince them.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
