Using higher-taxon richness as a surrogate for species richness: II. Local applications

Abstract

Recent analyses confirm that urgent attempts to catalogue the distribution of biological diversity may be facilitated by focusing at the level of genera or families rather than species. However, questions remain over the application of higher-taxon surveys to identify networks of priority areas for conservation action. Is the close spatial match between species and higher-taxon richness at global and regional scales re iterated when sites are locally distributed? How much money is saved by the higher-taxon approach? And how does using genus or family information affect the efficiency with which spatial priorities for conservation are identified? We examined these issues using data on the diversity of woody plants in Sri Lankan forests. We found that at this local scale, the family and particularly generic richness of sites was closely linked to their species richness, independently of variation in site size. Moreover, fieldwork in an additional forest showed that targeting woody plant genera and families rather than species reduced survey costs by a minimum of 60 % and 85 % respectively. Most importantly, while using family data in site-selection algorithms led to the loss from reserve networks of around 7-10% of woody plant species, using genera rather than species had virtually no effect on the representation of species in priority sites. These results thus confirm that judicious use of the higher-taxon approach is indeed a valuable technique for improving the cost effectiveness of field surveys for local conservation planning in the tropics.

Global models of ant diversity suggest regions where new discoveries are most likely are under disproportionate deforestation threat

“…In several studies, generic diversity of ants has been shown to be correlated with species richness and so can be used as a good predictor of species richness for large (79) and local scales (80)(81)(82)(83)(84)(85), with some interesting exceptions (86). Other advantages and disadvantages of using higher taxonomic rank have been summarized by Balmford et al (87) and Gaston (88), but all such summaries highlight the value of higher taxonomic level analyses. Exotic genera.…”

Concordance between vascular plant and macrofungal community composition in broadleaf deciduous forests in central Italy

“…In fact, over the last 20 years, conservation biologists have discussed the use of surrogate species in conservation planning at great length, debating both the advantages and disadvantages of this approach (Murphy et al 2011). There are several different types of surrogacy (Magurran 2004), such as: (i) cross-taxon, where high species richness in one taxon is used to infer high species richness in others (Mortiz et al 2001); (ii) within-taxon, where generic or familial richness is treated as a surrogate of species richness (Balmford et al 1996); and (iii) environmental, where parameters such as temperature or topographical diversity are assumed to reflect species richness (Magurran 2004). Another approach is based on "community concordance" and describes the degree to which patterns in community structure in a set of sites are similar in two different taxonomic groups (Paszkowski & Tonn 2000).…”

The Tropical Biodiversity Data Gap: Addressing Disparity in Global Monitoring

“…Although the cost of running such programs may vary by several orders of magnitude among taxa and countries [40], surrogates may provide a shortcut to useful biodiversity data (e.g., [41,42]). Further, appropriately designed sampling schemes may lessen the required coverage if implemented accurately [35].…”