[Taxacom] FW: Biodiversity and Species Value

[Michael Heads]

Hi John,
 
What is biodiversity? How do you calculate the biodiversity value of an area? Many authors now agree that it is more than just a raw species number and there is an extensive literature on 'phylogenetic diversity'. There are 1900 hits on Google scholar for papers on pd published since 2009 and many of these papers discuss the conservation implications. I don't think it's fair to say that biodiversity values calculated for taxa and areas are simply subjective or that conservation based on biodiversity value would be 'weirdly screwed'. If conservation agencies are not using this new information yet, perhaps they could have a look at it. 
  
Michael Heads

Wellington, New Zealand.

My papers on biogeography are at: http://tiny.cc/RiUE0

--- On Sat, 12/6/10, John Shuey <jshuey at tnc.org> wrote:


From: John Shuey <jshuey at tnc.org>
Subject: [Taxacom] FW: Biodiversity and Species Value
To: taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu
Received: Saturday, 12 June, 2010, 2:55 AM




A few notes to clarify my rambling post from my dimly lit back porch last night.

The entities that implement conservation don’t really ponder the evolutionary “uniqueness” of individual target species.  Value as you are discussing it, is subjective and biased by personal experience – the resulting conservation agenda would be weirdly screwed by all this bias.  Value as defined by the conservation community is a cold, hard evaluation of resource allocation – how do you maximize conservation bang for the buck.   Your time spent pondering ”phylogentic conservation value” might better be spent counting angels on pin heads (sorry – couldn’t resist!).

To follow-up on horseshoe crabs – ironically there is quite a bit of conservation interest pointed in their direction at the moment – but is has nothing to do with their odd evolutionary history.  As it turns out, their seasonal mass spawning – the release of hurdreds of tons of eggs each night – is a critical resource that migrating shore birds on the East Coast depend upon.  If crab stocks are reduced below a critical threshold, it could have a ripple through impact on shore birds and the ecosystems they influence in North and South America.

And Curtis states the obvious about great apes.  I’d like to “claim” that they are treated just like every other species.  That their habitats are identified as critical for inclusion in a complementary scheme of conservation sites.  And that the actual site designs and strategies for specific conservation areas simply include them as an “area sensitive species”, so that  great apes (and big cats for a more typical example) can maintain viable populations for the foreseeable future.   The reality is that they ARE GREAT APES – and almost everyone interjects personal bias in prioritizing them for conservation.  

Again, sorry about the "angels on a pinhead thing" - but there are things you could be worrying about that would have a more tangible impact on conservation.

John Shuey

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