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. 2002 Feb 19;99(4):2067-71.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.251680798.

Hotspots and the conservation of evolutionary history

Wes Sechrest  1 , Thomas M Brooks, Gustavo A B da Fonseca, William R Konstant, Russell A Mittermeier, Andy Purvis, Anthony B Rylands, John L Gittleman
Affiliations

Hotspots and the conservation of evolutionary history

Wes Sechrest et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Species diversity is unevenly distributed across the globe, with terrestrial diversity concentrated in a few restricted biodiversity hotspots. These areas are associated with high losses of primary vegetation and increased human population density, resulting in growing numbers of threatened species. We show that conservation of these hotspots is critical because they harbor even greater amounts of evolutionary history than expected by species numbers alone. We used supertrees for carnivores and primates to estimate that nearly 70% of the total amount of evolutionary history represented in these groups is found in 25 biodiversity hotspots.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
A hypothetical phylogeny of three taxa. Measures of phylogenetic diversity are represented by branch lengths, with time (my, millions of years) measured across the horizontal axis. “Species evolutionary history” is calculated by the length of the branch to the most recent ancestral split. For example, for species C, this is equal to 5 my, whereas for species A the value is 10 my. “Clade evolutionary history” includes all branches in a set of taxa. For the clade containing species B and C this is equal to 15 my, because it includes all of the higher shared branches.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Phylogenetic patterns of primates (Left) and carnivores (Right) residing in biodiversity hotspots. Species hotspot designation is used to color branches where extant PD exists. Red branches represent PD found only in hotspots (endemic), yellow branches represent PD occurring in hotspots, and black branches represent PD not occurring in hotspots. Threatened species are indicated with an asterisk. Across carnivores, the pinnipeds are represented in gray to denote that they were excluded from analyses because of their aquatic geographic range distributions.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Map of the top 25 biodiversity hotspots (from ref. 4) containing endemic primates (Upper) and carnivores (Lower). Hotspots with endemic species are labeled by name and colored corresponding to the scale with the amount of species evolutionary history in my. Species endemic to multiple hotspots were not used to calculate these amounts (for clarity), and hence the measure of endemic clade evolutionary history has not been included.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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