Phylogenetically-informed priorities for amphibian conservation.

Nick J B Isaac,Helen M Meredith,Kamran Safi,David W Redding,Matthew Charles Fisher

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0043912

Abstract

The amphibian decline and extinction crisis demands urgent action to prevent further large numbers of species extinctions. Lists of priority species for conservation, based on a combination of species’ threat status and unique contribution to phylogenetic diversity, are one tool for the direction and catalyzation of conservation action. We describe the construction of a near-complete species-level phylogeny of 5713 amphibian species, which we use to create a list of evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered species (EDGE list) for the entire class Amphibia. We present sensitivity analyses to test the robustness of our priority list to uncertainty in species’ phylogenetic position and threat status. We find that both sources of uncertainty have only minor impacts on our ‘top 100‘ list of priority species, indicating the robustness of the approach. By contrast, our analyses suggest that a large number of Data Deficient species are likely to be high priorities for conservation action from the perspective of their contribution to the evolutionary history.

Highlights

The current biodiversity crisis demands pragmatic triage solutions
We show that a working hypothesis for the species level phylogeny of the entire class of nearly 6000 species can be generated from a small number of synthetic sources, namely a cladogram of higher taxa and an authoritative taxonomy
We explore the impact of different choices about the way in which EDGE scores are generated from the combination of phylogenetic and extinction risk assessment data

Summary

Introduction

The current biodiversity crisis demands pragmatic triage solutions. Lists of priority species are an important tool for the effective allocation of scarce conservation resources. The amphibian extinction crisis has been attributed variously to habitat loss and fragmentation [11], disease [12,13], environmental contamination [14], overexploitation [15], introduced species [16], climate change [17,18], and interactions between multiple threats [19,20,21,22,23,24]. Faced with this crisis, a set of conservation priorities for amphibian species is urgently needed. We explore the impact of different choices about the way in which EDGE scores are generated from the combination of phylogenetic and extinction risk assessment data

Materials and Methods

Results

47 Limnodynastidae