Abstract
Alternative prioritization strategies have been proposed to safeguard biodiversity over macroevolutionary time scales. The first prioritizes the most distantly related species—maximizing phylogenetic diversity (PD)—in the hopes of capturing at least some lineages that will successfully diversify into the future. The second prioritizes lineages that are currently speciating, in the hopes that successful lineages will continue to generate species into the future. These contrasting schemes also map onto contrasting predictions about the role of slow diversifiers in the production of biodiversity over palaeontological time scales. We consider the performance of the two schemes across 10 dated species-level palaeo-phylogenetic trees ranging from Foraminifera to dinosaurs. We find that prioritizing PD for conservation generally led to fewer subsequent lineages, while prioritizing diversifiers led to modestly more subsequent diversity, compared with random sets of lineages. Importantly for conservation, the tree shape when decisions are made cannot predict which scheme will be most successful. These patterns are inconsistent with the notion that long-lived lineages are the source of new species. While there may be sound reasons for prioritizing PD for conservation, long-term species production might not be one of them.
Highlights
Given our limited resources for preserving biodiversity during the current extinction crisis [1,2], arguments have been made for protecting sets of more distantly related species from extinction as one principle for triage
The first prioritizes the most distantly related species—maximizing phylogenetic diversity (PD)—in the hopes of capturing at least some lineages that will successfully diversify into the future
The second prioritizes lineages that are currently speciating, in the hopes that successful lineages will continue to generate species into the future. These contrasting schemes map onto contrasting predictions about the role of slow diversifiers in the production of biodiversity over palaeontological time scales
Summary
Given our limited resources for preserving biodiversity during the current extinction crisis [1,2], arguments have been made for protecting sets of more distantly related species from extinction as one principle for triage. All these arguments above have been used to support conservation strategies that prioritize total evolutionary history, which is achieved by focusing on sets of species that are distantly related [8] and typically select for slow diversifiers.
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