Comparing species and evolutionary diversity metrics to inform conservation

Appropriate metrics to inform farmers about species diversity

Farmers are key players in actions to halt biodiversity loss from farmland. However, if farmers are to sustain biodiversity, they must first be adequately informed about biodiversity and understand its drivers. Measuring biodiversity at the farm scale is difficult because of the structural complexity of many farms, and because different aspects of diversity can be considered desirable, e.g. spe...

Comparing strategies to preserve evolutionary diversity.

The likely future extinction of various species will result in a decline of two quantities: species richness and phylogenetic diversity (PD, or 'evolutionary history'). Under a simple stochastic model of extinction, we can estimate the expected loss of these quantities under two conservation strategies: An 'egalitarian' approach, which reduces the extinction risk of all species, and a 'targeted...

Applying Species-Area Relationships to the Conservation of Species Diversity

Phylogenetic diversity metrics for ecological communities: integrating species richness, abundance and evolutionary history.

Phylogenetic information is increasingly being used to understand the assembly of biological communities and ecological processes. However, commonly used metrics of phylogenetic diversity (PD) do not incorporate information on the relative abundances of individuals within a community. In this study, we develop three indices of PD that explicitly consider species abundances. First, we present a ...

Site-Specific Assessments of the Abundance of Three Inshore Dolphin Species to Inform Conservation and Management

1 Cetacean Research Unit, School of Veterinary and Life Sciences, Murdoch University, Perth, WA, Australia, 2 The Western Australian Marine Science Institution, Perth, WA, Australia, 3 Department of Applied Ecology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA, 4 Centre for Marine Futures, Oceans Institute and School of Animal Biology, The University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia