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Conservation biology

The diversity of biodiversity

Nature volume 445, pages 717–718 (2007)Cite this article

Species richness is not the same as evolutionary richness. So which is the better measure for setting conservation priorities? The flora of the Cape of South Africa provides a test for that pressing question.

Intuition is fine, but theoretical work6 has cast doubt on the need for such algorithmic approaches: species richness works well because areas with more species in a group generally also contain more of the group's total diversity. Given that measuring evolutionary divergence is costly, the cheaper approach of using species counts might be sufficient. Furthermore, whereas species number is a straightforward metric, it is not clear exactly what one would be conserving if one focused instead on evolutionary divergence. Forest et al.2 confront both these issues with data.

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Figure 1: Species diversity and evolutionary diversity.

References

  1. Goldblatt, P. & Manning, J. C. Cape Plants, a Conspectus of the Cape Flora in South Africa (Natl Bot. Inst. S. Afr., Cape Town, 2000).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. is in the Department of Biological Sciences, Arne Ø. Mooers, currently a fellow of the Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin, Germany, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6, Canada. amooers@sfu.ca,

    Arne Ø. Mooers

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Mooers, A. The diversity of biodiversity. Nature 445, 717–718 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/445717a

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