In lieu of exact species counts, conservation strategies typically rely on the assumption that geographic diversity patterns are the same among all taxonomic groups. A 16-strong team of young conservation biologists, many already friends, decided to test that assumption.

Former housemates and PhD labmates Richard Grenyer and David Orme kept in touch while doing their respective postdocs. Grenyer was working on a massive mammal database at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, while Orme, based at Imperial College London, UK, focused his attention on a global distribution of birds. Inspired by the compatible data sets, they combined them with an amphibian database to form a huge inventory of more than 19,000 species. On page 93, the team reports that whereas the distribution of overall species richness is similar among the three groups, there is little similarity in the distribution patterns of rare and threatened species.

“All of the data coming online at the same time was critical,” says Grenyer, now a researcher at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London. But the key to this probably controversial work, he adds, was working with friends. “If you're working with people you don't know, or who are senior to you, your creativity may be constrained. You don't take risks,” he says.