Conserving evolutionarily distinct species is critical to safeguard human well-being

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.