scholarly journals Geographical patterns in phylogenetic diversity of Chinese woody plants and its application for conservation planning

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-194
Author(s):  
Hongyu Cai ◽  
Lisha Lyu ◽  
Nawal Shrestha ◽  
Zhiyao Tang ◽  
Xiangyan Su ◽  
...  
2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 890-902 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz H. Varzinczak ◽  
Thais B. Zanata ◽  
Mauricio O. Moura ◽  
Fernando C. Passos

PLoS ONE ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (12) ◽  
pp. e115132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria G. Asmyhr ◽  
Simon Linke ◽  
Grant Hose ◽  
David A. Nipperess

2017 ◽  
Vol 284 (1865) ◽  
pp. 20170627 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan F. Rosauer ◽  
Laura J. Pollock ◽  
Simon Linke ◽  
Walter Jetz

In the face of the current extinction crisis and severely limited conservation resources, safeguarding the tree of life is increasingly recognized as a high priority. We conducted a first systematic global assessment of the conservation of phylogenetic diversity (PD) that uses realistic area targets and highlights the key areas for conservation of the mammalian tree of life. Our approach offers a substantially more effective conservation solution than one focused on species. In many locations, priorities for PD differ substantially from those of a species-based approach that ignores evolutionary relationships. This discrepancy increases rapidly as the amount of land available for conservation declines, as does the relative benefit for mammal conservation (for the same area protected). This benefit is equivalent to an additional 5900 Myr of distinct mammalian evolution captured simply through a better informed choice of priority areas. Our study uses area targets for PD to generate more realistic conservation scenarios, and tests the impact of phylogenetic uncertainty when selecting areas to represent diversity across a phylogeny. It demonstrates the opportunity of using rapidly growing phylogenetic information in conservation planning and the readiness for a new generation of conservation planning applications that explicitly consider the heritage of the tree of life's biodiversity.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Anthony Nipperess

AbstractThe most precious places for conservation are those that make the largest contribution to regional, national or global biodiversity. The two key concepts for determining the contribution of a specific site are Complementarity (the gain in diversity achieved when adding that site to a set of other sites) and Irreplaceability (here defined as the overall complementarity of that site when compared to a range of possible combinations of other sites). Generalised Complementarity Analysis (GCA) is a mathematical framework that provides an exact analytical solution for the expected complementarity (gain in diversity) of a focal site, when added to a set of other sites of a given size (m). Diversity is defined very generally to allow for complementarity to be calculated for species richness, Functional Diversity or Phylogenetic Diversity. The expected irreplaceability of a focal site is then defined in GCA as the area under the curve of expected complementarity values for all possible values of m. GCA is much more computationally efficient than existing algorithmic approaches and is scalable to very large numbers of sites. Because complementarity and irreplaceability are calculated for all possible combinations of sites, GCA serves as a null model for systematic conservation planning algorithms that seek to optimise site selection. However, because truly irreplaceable sites remain so under all possible site selections, GCA is a powerful conservation planning tool in its own right, providing an efficient means of identifying the world’s most precious places for conservation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Xu ◽  
Jia-Jia Liu ◽  
Hai-Ning Li ◽  
Juan Liu ◽  
Kevin S Burgess ◽  
...  

Abstract Aims Phylogenetic diversity metrics can discern the relative contributions of ecological and evolutionary processes associated with the assembly of plant communities. However, the magnitude of the potential variation associated with phylogenetic methodologies, and its effect on estimates of phylogenetic diversity, remains poorly understood. Here, we assess how sources of variation associated with estimates of phylogenetic diversity can potentially affect our understanding of plant community structure for a series of temperate forest plots in China. Methods In total, 20 forest plots, comprising of 274 woody species and 581 herbaceous species, were surveyed and sampled along an elevational gradient of 2800 m on Taibai Mountain, China. We used multi-model inference to search for the most parsimonious relationship between estimates of phylogenetic diversity and each of four predictors (i.e., type of phylogenetic reconstruction method, phylogenetic diversity metric, woody or herbaceous growth form, and elevation), and their pairwise interactions. Important Findings There was no significant difference in patterns of phylogenetic diversity when using synthesis-based vs molecular-based phylogenetic methods. Results showed that elevation, the type of phylogenetic diversity metric, growth form, and their interactions, accounted for > 44% of the variance in our estimates of phylogenetic diversity. In general, phylogenetic diversity decreased with increasing elevation; however, the trend was weaker for herbaceous plants than for woody plants. Moreover, the three phylogenetic diversity metrics showed consistent patterns (i.e., clustered) across the elevational gradient for woody plants. For herbaceous plants, the mean pairwise distance showed a random distribution over the gradient. These results suggest that a better understanding of temperate forest community structure can be obtained when estimates of phylogenetic diversity include methodological and environmental sources of variation.


Biotropica ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 577-585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marko Gómez-Hernández ◽  
Guadalupe Williams-Linera ◽  
Deborah J. Lodge ◽  
Roger Guevara ◽  
Eduardo Ruiz-Sanchez ◽  
...  

2014 ◽  
Vol 202 (3) ◽  
pp. 864-873 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Schuldt ◽  
Thorsten Assmann ◽  
Helge Bruelheide ◽  
Walter Durka ◽  
David Eichenberg ◽  
...  

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