Herbario VALPL y Laboratorio de Botánica, Departamento de Ciencias y Geografía, Universidad de Playa Ancha, Valparaíso, Chile.
Jardín Botánico Nacional, Viña del Mar, Chile.
PLoS One. 2023 Jul 5;18(7):e0287957. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0287957. eCollection 2023.
As a direct consequence of global change, both natural and human-induced, a high percentage of biodiversity is now under threat worldwide. This has urged conservation planners to formulate and/or improve existing strategies to preserve species and their ecosystems. In this context, the present study focuses on two strategies using phylogeny-based measures of biodiversity to account for the processes that led to the biodiversity patterns observed today. It will contribute additional information that can aid decision-making regarding the assignment of threat status for some species, thus strengthening measures currently in use and facilitate the allocation of often scarce conservation resources. The Evolutionarily Distinct (ED) index prioritises species that are on long branches of the tree of life with few descendants, and the Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) index integrates evolutionary history with IUCN Red List threat status of species. It has been used mostly in animal groups, but since the threats faced by many plants have not been evaluated, it has been more difficult to compile for plants worldwide. Here, we apply the EDGE metric to species of the endemic genera of Chile. However, more than 50% of the endemic flora of the country are still lacking official threat status. We thus used an alternative measure (Relative Evolutionary Distinctness-RED), based on a range-weighted phylogenetic tree, which uses geographic ranges to adjust branch lengths, and calculate ED. The RED index was shown to be a suitable measure, yielding similar results compared to EDGE, at least for this group of species. Given the urgency to halt biodiversity loss and the time it would take to evaluate all species, we propose that this index is used to set conservation priorities until we can calculate EDGE for these unique endemic species. This would allow guiding decision-making until we can gather more data to assess and assign conservation status to new species.
由于全球变化的直接影响，包括自然和人为因素，现在全球有很大比例的生物多样性受到威胁。这促使保护规划者制定和/或改进现有的策略，以保护物种及其生态系统。在这种情况下，本研究侧重于使用基于系统发育的生物多样性措施的两种策略，以解释导致今天观察到的生物多样性模式的过程。它将提供额外的信息，有助于决策一些物种的威胁状况，从而加强目前使用的措施，并促进经常稀缺的保护资源的分配。进化独特（ED）指数优先考虑那些在生命之树的长分支上且后代较少的物种，而进化独特且全球濒危（EDGE）指数则将进化历史与物种的 IUCN 红色名录威胁状况相结合。它主要用于动物群体，但由于许多植物面临的威胁尚未得到评估，因此更难以在全球范围内为植物编制 EDGE 指数。在这里，我们将 EDGE 指标应用于智利特有属的物种。然而，该国超过 50%的特有植物群仍然缺乏官方的威胁状况。因此，我们使用了一种替代措施（相对进化独特性-RED），该措施基于一个范围加权的系统发育树，该树使用地理范围来调整分支长度，并计算 ED。RED 指数被证明是一种合适的措施，与 EDGE 相比，至少对于这组物种，结果相似。鉴于阻止生物多样性丧失的紧迫性和评估所有物种所需的时间，我们建议在我们能够为这些独特的特有物种计算 EDGE 之前，使用该指数来确定保护重点。这将有助于指导决策，直到我们能够收集更多的数据来评估和分配新物种的保护状况。
