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I-HEDGE: Determining the optimum complementary sets of taxa for conservation using evolutionary isolation

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Evelyn Jensen

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Abstract

� 2016 Jensen et al.In the midst of the current biodiversity crisis, conservation efforts might profitably be directed towards ensuring that extinctions do not result in inordinate losses of evolutionary history. Numerous methods have been developed to evaluate the importance of species based on their contribution to total phylogenetic diversity on trees and networks, but existing methods fail to take complementarity into account, and thus cannot identify the best order or subset of taxa to protect. Here, we develop a novel iterative calculation of the heightened evolutionary distinctiveness and globally endangered metric (I-HEDGE) that produces the optimal ranked list for conservation prioritization, taking into account complementarity and based on both phylogenetic diversity and extinction probability. We applied this metric to a phylogenetic network based on mitochondrial control region data from extant and recently extinct giant Gal�pagos tortoises, a highly endangered group of closely related species. We found that the restoration of two extinct species (a project currently underway) will contribute the greatest gain in phylogenetic diversity, and present an ordered list of rankings that is the optimum complementarity set for conservation prioritization.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Jensen EL, Mooers AO, Caccone A, Russello MA

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: PeerJ

Year: 2016

Volume: 2016

Issue: 8

Online publication date: 23/08/2016

Acceptance date: 02/04/2016

ISSN (electronic): 2167-8359

Publisher: PeerJ Inc.

URL: https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2350

DOI: 10.7717/peerj.2350

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