1. South African National Biodiversity Institute, Kirstenbosch Research Centre, Private Bag X7, Claremont 7735, South Africa
2. Department of Botany, University of Cape Town, University Private Bag, Rondebosch 7700, South Africa
3. Jodrell Laboratory, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 3DS, UK
4. South African National Biodiversity Institute, Biodiversity Planning Unit, Private Bag X101, Pretoria 0001, South Africa
5. Biology Department, Gilmer Hall, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia 22904-4328, USA
6. Institute of Ecology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602, USA
7. Botany Department, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, PO Box 77000, Port Elizabeth 6031, South Africa
8. Australian Museum, 6 College Street, Sydney, New South Wales 2010, Australia
9. Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EJ, UK
10. Centre for Invasion Biology, Private Bag X1, University of Stellenbosch, Matieland 7602, South Africa
11. Department of Botany and Plant Biotechnology, University of Johannesburg, PO Box 524, Auckland Park 2006, South Africa
12. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Correspondence to: Félix Forest^1,2,3,12Vincent Savolainen³ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to F.F. (Email: f.forest@kew.org) and V.S. (Email: v.savolainen@kew.org).

One of the biggest challenges for conservation biology is to provide conservation planners with ways to prioritize effort. Much attention has been focused on biodiversity hotspots¹. However, the conservation of evolutionary process is now also acknowledged as a priority in the face of global change². Phylogenetic diversity (PD) is a biodiversity index that measures the length of evolutionary pathways that connect a given set of taxa^{3, 4}. PD therefore identifies sets of taxa that maximize the accumulation of 'feature diversity'. Recent studies, however, concluded that taxon richness is a good surrogate for PD^{5, 6, 7, 8, 9}. Here we show taxon richness to be decoupled from PD, using a biome-wide phylogenetic analysis of the flora of an undisputed biodiversity hotspot—the Cape of South Africa. We demonstrate that this decoupling has real-world importance for conservation planning. Finally, using a database of medicinal and economic plant use¹⁰, we demonstrate that PD protection is the best strategy for preserving feature diversity in the Cape. We should be able to use PD to identify those key regions that maximize future options, both for the continuing evolution of life on Earth and for the benefit of society.

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