Integration of evolutionary diversity in conservation planning: recent advances and new perspectives

Abstract

Spatial conservation planning has evolved remarkably in past decades, moving from strategies consisting in identifying spatial patterns of species richness, endemism and turnover to sophisticated prioritization frameworks [1]. These frameworks aim at identifying conservation networks that maximize overall representation and persistence of biodiversity and ecosystem services, while accounting for cost-efficiency of available resources. Meanwhile, evolutionary scientists have highlighted the need to consider evolutionary history shared among and between species, in order to assure biodiversity persistence and maximize evolutionary potential. However, there is still a wide gap between conservation planning and evolution disciplines. Reasons to this gap include: 1) an uncertain added value when explicit considering evolutionary diversity in conservation plans; 2) lack of clarity on how to set conservation objectives when considering different facets of evolutionary diversity; and 3) methodological limitations in mapping evolutionary diversity. In this talk I will review the progress towards, and limitations and perspectives of, integrating conservation planning and evolution disciplines. In particular, I will focus on a recent methodology to map intra-specific lineages (phylin) [2], and how to combine these maps with commonly used spatial prioritization frameworks and tools [3]. Finally, I will discuss how recent developments in high throughput sequencing and in the field of ecological modeling can contribute to aid conservation planning in the future.

References 1 Moilanen, A., Possingham, H. P. & Wilson, K. A. in Spatial Conservation Prioritization - Quantitative Methods and Computational Tools (eds A. Moilanen, K.A. Wilson, & H.P. Possingham) (Oxford University Press, 2009). 2 Tarroso, P., Velo-Antón, G. & Carvalho, S. B. phylin: an r package for phylogeographic interpolation. Mol. Ecol. Resour 15, 349-357, doi:10.1111/1755-0998.12312 (2015). 3 Carvalho, S. B. et al. Spatial conservation prioritization of biodiversity spanning the evolutionary continuum. Nature Ecology &Amp; Evolution 1, 0151, doi:10.1038/s41559-017-0151