The use of phylogenies in ecology is increasingly common and has broadened our understanding of biological diversity. Ecological sub‐disciplines, particularly conservation, community ecology and macroecology, all recognize the value of evolutionary relationships but the resulting development of phylogenetic approaches has led to a proliferation of phylogenetic diversity metrics. The use of many metrics across the sub‐disciplines hampers potential meta‐analyses, syntheses, and generalizations of existing results. Further, there is no guide for selecting the appropriate metric for a given question, and different metrics are frequently used to address similar questions. To improve the choice, application, and interpretation of phylo‐diversity metrics, we organize existing metrics by expanding on a unifying framework for phylogenetic information.Generally, questions about phylogenetic relationships within or between assemblages tend to ask three types of question: how much; how different; or how regular? We show that these questions reflect three dimensions of a phylogenetic tree: richness, divergence, and regularity. We classify 70 existing phylo‐diversity metrics based on their mathematical form within these three dimensions and identify ‘anchor’ representatives: for α‐diversity metrics these are PD (Faith's phylogenetic diversity), MPD (mean pairwise distance), and VPD (variation of pairwise distances). By analysing mathematical formulae and using simulations, we use this framework to identify metrics that mix dimensions, and we provide a guide to choosing and using the most appropriate metrics. We show that metric choice requires connecting the research question with the correct dimension of the framework and that there are logical approaches to selecting and interpreting metrics. The guide outlined herein will help researchers navigate the current jungle of indices.

The presented distinctness metrics are effective yet easily communicable and versatile tools to assist objective global conservation decision making. Given that most species will remain ecologically understudied, combining growing phylogenetic and spatial data may be an efficient way to retain vital aspects of biodiversity.

Main text Land use change (e.g. agriculture, urbanization) is widely recognised to influence zoonotic disease risk and emergence in humans 1,2 , but whether this is underpinned by predictable ecological changes remains unclear 3. In particular, it has been hypothesised that systematic differences in species resilience to human impacts, linked to traits, life histories and phylogeny, might result in habitat disturbance causing predictable changes in potential reservoir host diversity and species composition 4,5. Here, we analyse 6801 ecological assemblages and 376 host species worldwide, controlling for research effort, and show that land use has global and systematic effects on local zoonotic host communities. Known wildlife hosts of human-shared pathogens and parasites overall comprise a significantly greater proportion of local species richness (18%-72% increase) and total abundance (21%-144% increase) in sites under substantial human use (secondary, agricultural and urban ecosystems) than in nearby undisturbed habitats. The magnitude of this effect varies taxonomically and is strongest for rodent, bat and passerine bird zoonotic host species, which may be one factor underpinning the global importance of these taxa as zoonotic reservoirs. Crucially, we further show that mammal species that harbor more pathogens overall (either humanshared or non human-shared) are more likely to occur in human-managed ecosystems, suggesting that these trends may be mediated by ecological or life-history traits that influence both host status and human-tolerance 6,7. Our results suggest that global changes in mode and intensity of land use are creating growing hazardous interfaces between people, livestock and wildlife reservoirs of zoonotic disease. Anthropogenic environmental change impacts many dimensions of human health and wellbeing, including the incidence and emergence of zoonotic and vector-borne diseases 1. Although large-scale research into environmental drivers of disease has mostly focused on climate, there is growing consensus that land use change (conversion of natural habitats to agricultural, urban or otherwise anthropogenic ecosystems) is a globally-significant mediator of human infection risk and disease emergence 2,4. Land use change directly and indirectly drives biodiversity loss, turnover and homogenisation (including through invasions and rare species losses) 8,9 , modifies landscape structure in ways that modulate epidemiological processes (e.g. fragmentation 10 , resource provisioning 11) and can increase human-wildlife

Conservation prioritization is dominated by the threat status of candidate species. However, species differ markedly in the shared genetic information they embody, and this information is not taken into account if species are prioritized by threat status alone. We developed a system of prioritization that incorporates both threat status and genetic information and applied it to 9546 species of birds worldwide. We devised a simple measure of a species' genetic value that takes into account the shape of the entire taxonomic tree of birds. This measure approximates the evolutionary history that each species embodies and sums to the phylogenetic diversity of the entire taxonomic tree. We then combined this genetic value with each species' probability of extinction to create a species-specific measure of expected loss of genetic information. The application of our methods to the world's avifauna showed that ranking species by expected loss of genetic information may help preserve bird evolutionary history by upgrading those threatened species with fewer close relatives. We recommend developing a mechanism to incorporate a species' genetic value into the prioritization framework.

Inadequate funding levels are a major impediment to effective global biodiversity conservation and are likely associated with recent failures to meet United Nations biodiversity targets. Some countries are more severely underfunded than others and therefore represent urgent financial priorities. However, attempts to identify these highly underfunded countries have been hampered for decades by poor and incomplete data on actual spending, coupled with uncertainty and lack of consensus over the relative size of spending gaps. Here, we assemble a global database of annual conservation spending. We then develop a statistical model that explains 86% of variation in conservation expenditures, and use this to identify countries where funding is robustly below expected levels. The 40 most severely underfunded countries contain 32% of all threatened mammalian diversity and include neighbors in some of the world's most biodiversity-rich areas (Sundaland, Wallacea, and Near Oceania). However, very modest increases in international assistance would achieve a large improvement in the relative adequacy of global conservation finance. Our results could therefore be quickly applied to limit immediate biodiversity losses at relatively little cost.ecological/environmental policy | CBD | sustainability | foreign aid | governance