Department of Biology, School of Biological Sciences, Washington State University, Vancouver, WA, USA.
Laboratory of Animal Behaviour and Conservation, College of Biology and the Environment, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing, People's Republic of China.
Glob Chang Biol. 2021 Oct;27(19):4516-4529. doi: 10.1111/gcb.15734. Epub 2021 Jul 30.
Human activities are driving many species to the brink of extinction, and the current distribution of protected areas only weakly alleviates pressure on threatened species. This discrepancy reflects the presence of protected areas on lands available instead of the ecological, evolutionary, or conservation values of species present. Habitat loss consequently continues to impact threatened species, as illustrated by geographic patterns of biodiversity loss for amphibians. Given the need to better align the boundaries of protected areas with at-risk biodiversity, we assessed the importance of various factors for identifying global and biome-level conservation priority areas, specifically for amphibians. We identified, mapped, and ranked areas of critical conservation importance for all amphibian species on earth using a new integrative tool that scores the urgency of conserving each species and location based on a combination of species characteristics and ecoregion-level human impacts. Our integrative approach is novel in that it accounts for likely threats to Data Deficient species, considers the irreplaceability of unique species that are phylogenetically isolated, and addresses the localized conservation implications of species endemicity and projected future human impacts to an ecoregion. For comparison, we also mapped and ranked amphibian biodiversity using species richness and an Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) score proxy. Our integrative approach predicted key regions for amphibian conservation that were not apparent when using a simple species richness or EDGE score proxy-based approach. Furthermore, by scaling conservation priority scores relative to biome, we identified several temperate and xeric regions of crucial yet overlooked conservation importance for amphibians. Until global amphibian diversity is thoroughly catalogued, we recommend using our integrative scoring approach to set geographic priorities for amphibian habitat protection, while acknowledging that this approach may be complemented by others (e.g., EDGE scores). Our study provides an avenue for avoiding common pitfalls of more simplistic species richness-based approaches for conservation planning, and can be used to improve the future design of protected areas.
人类活动正在使许多物种濒临灭绝，而目前保护区的分布仅对受威胁物种的压力产生微弱缓解。这种差异反映了保护区存在于可用土地上，而不是存在于物种的生态、进化或保护价值上。正如两栖动物生物多样性丧失的地理模式所表明的那样，因此，栖息地的丧失继续对受威胁物种产生影响。鉴于需要更好地使保护区边界与濒危生物多样性保持一致，我们评估了各种因素对确定全球和生物群落层面保护优先领域的重要性，特别是对两栖动物。我们使用一种新的综合工具，根据物种特征和生态区层面人类影响的组合，对地球上所有两栖动物物种的关键保护重要性区域进行了识别、绘制和排名。我们的综合方法是新颖的，因为它考虑到了对数据不足物种的可能威胁，考虑了在系统发育上孤立的独特物种的不可替代性，并解决了物种特有性和预计未来人类对生态区的影响的本地化保护影响。作为比较，我们还使用物种丰富度和进化独特且全球濒危（EDGE）得分代理对两栖动物生物多样性进行了绘制和排名。我们的综合方法预测了关键的两栖动物保护区域，而这些区域在使用简单的物种丰富度或 EDGE 得分代理方法时并不明显。此外，通过将保护优先级得分相对于生物群落进行缩放，我们确定了几个温带和干旱地区对两栖动物具有至关重要但被忽视的保护意义。在全球两栖动物多样性得到彻底编目之前，我们建议使用我们的综合评分方法来确定保护两栖动物栖息地的地理优先事项，同时承认这种方法可能会得到其他方法（例如 EDGE 得分）的补充。我们的研究为避免更简单的基于物种丰富度的保护规划方法的常见陷阱提供了一种途径，并可用于改进保护区的未来设计。
