Robustness of reserve selection procedures under temporal species turnover

Abstract

Complementarity-based algorithms for the selection of reserve networks emphasize the need to represent biodiversity features e¤ciently, but this may not be su¤cient to maintain those features in the long term. Here, we use data from the Common Birds Census in Britain as an exemplar data set to determine guidelines for the selection of reserve networks which are more robust to temporal turnover in features. The extinction patterns found over the 1981^1991 interval suggest that two such guidelines are to represent species in the best sites where they occur (higher local abundance) and to give priority to the rarer species. We tested ¢ve reserve selection strategies, one which ¢nds the minimum representation set and others which incorporate the ¢rst or both guidelines proposed. Strategies were tested in terms of their e¤ciency (inversely related to the total area selected) and e¡ectiveness (inversely related to the percentage of species lost) using data on eight pairs of ten-year intervals. The minimum set strategy was always the most e¤cient, but su¡ered higher species loss than the others, suggesting that there is a trade-o¡ between e¤ciency and e¡ectiveness. A desirable compromise can be achieved by embedding the concerns about the long-term maintenance of the biodiversity features of interest in the complementarity-based algorithms.

A review of applications of the six-step method of systematic conservation planning

“…Whether these targets for species representation are adequate to ensure population persistence is unknown; only one paper in our dataset tried to set targets for minimum numbers of individuals based on minimum viable population estimates (Kerley et al 2003). The issue of persistence is one that has been extensively discussed in the literature, and which is not adequately addressed with representation targets (Rodrigues et al 2000a, 2000b, Cabeza and Moilanen 2003, Kerley et al 2003, Pressey et al 2003, Solomon et al 2003, Smith et al 2010. If planning units are designed to meet minimum size thresholds for species persistence Logan 1998, Wiersma and, or if the selection algorithms are modified to constrain sites to be of a minimum size and/or to be minimally fragmented Wintle 2007, Smith et al 2010), then representation and persistence goals might be adequate.…”

Ranking protected areas in the Azores using standardised sampling of soil epigean arthropods

“…In spite of some recent criticism (see Prendergast et al 1999;Heikkinen 2002), complementarity is nowadays a widely used technique for reserve selection, due mainly to the fact that it performs better than scoring techniques but also because limited funding is available for conservation (Faith and Walker 1996;Howard et al 1998;Margules and Pressey 2000;Rodrigues et al 2000b;. Moreover, there is also a recent debate on the relative value of optimisation complex methods versus heuristic simple reserve selection algorithms for complementarity (see Moore et al 2003).…”

Selecting areas for species persistence using occurrence data

“…Temporal turnover data (e.g. Margules et al, 1994;Virolainen et al, 1999;Rodrigues et al, 2000) can also be used as a direct estimate of persistence, although these are rarely available, especially for trees at larger spatial scales.…”