Conserving the evolutionary history of birds

Abstract

In the midst of the sixth mass extinction, limited resources are forcing conservationists to prioritize which species and places will receive conservation action. Evolutionary distinctiveness measures the isolation of a species on its phylogenetic tree. Combining a species’ evolutionary distinctiveness with its extinction risk creates a measure called an EDGE score. We use EDGE scores to prioritize the places and species that should be managed to conserve bird evolutionary history. We analyze all birds across species, orders, countries, and important bird areas. We further examine parrots, raptors, and seabirds in depth because these groups are especially threatened and relatively speciose. These three focal groups have greater median threatened evolutionary history than other birds, making them important for conserving bird evolutionary history. Australia, Brazil, Indonesia, Madagascar, New Zealand, and the Philippines are especially critical countries because they have the most threatened evolutionary history for endemic birds and are important for parrots, raptors, or seabirds. We further highlight that increased enforcement of international agreements for the conservation of parrots, raptors, or seabirds is needed because these agreements protect hundreds of millions of years of threatened bird evolutionary history. Decisive action is required to conserve the evolutionary history of birds into the Anthropocene.This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

Bridging Evolutionary History and Conservation of New World Vultures

“…Studies have shown that in some geographic areas, Black Vultures are constantly threatened by high levels of lead contamination and conflicts over wildlife that could be detrimental to their populations [20,80,81]. Species conventionally considered at low risk of extinction and marginalized from conservation plans can reach high ED values, so traditional prioritization systems could be masking their real importance [44]. In this sense, we highlight the importance of increasing efforts for the conservation of the Black Vulture, since its extinction would represent the loss of a significant amount of unique evolutionary history (~12 Ma), corresponding to 19% of the total phylogenetic diversity of the family.…”

“…Among these measures, the evolutionary distinctiveness (ED) captures the evolutionary uniqueness of the species, shedding light on more detailed aspects of phylogenetic diversity. Also, when the ED is weighted with the extinction risk, this provides an index known as EDGE, which becomes a useful variable tool in identifying and prioritizing irreplaceable key species in clades and ecosystems [42][43][44] since phylogenetic diversity can also play as a proxy of functional and morphological diversity [45][46][47].…”