Data from: Patterns of biodiverse, understudied groups do not mirror those of the surrogate groups that set conservation priorities: a case study from the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain of eastern North America

We conducted biodiversity inventories of lichens, woody plants, and sedges
at 32 sites on the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain of eastern North America
between November 2012 and June 2015. Each site comprised a single, uniform
habitat, and sites were classified as: Coastal Plain Floodplain forest,
Coastal Plain Flatwood swamp, Coastal Plain Oak-Pine forest, Maritime
forest, Mixed Mesic Hardwood forest, or Tidal forest. We compared alpha
diversity and community assemblages of each organismal group across the
sites, and compared selected minimal reserve sets in order to visualize
biodiversity patterns and assess whether specific components of vascular
plants (sedges and woody plants) serve as an effective surrogate for
lichens. Woody plants provide a direct substrate for lichen growth, but
there was no significant correlation between the alpha diversity of these
groups. For conserving maximal species richness among the studied groups,
lichens outperformed the sedges and woody plants as the better surrogate
group for building minimum reserve sets, even though vascular plants are
more commonly used as a surrogate. Likewise, sedge alpha diversity was not
correlated with lichens, or with woody plants. Although no group was an
effective indicator for high alpha diversity sites of other organisms, a
significant correlation between the community assemblages of lichens and
woody plants suggests that protecting varied types of plant communities
might serve as a workable surrogate for protecting lichens. The lack of
congruence between species richness patterns across organismal groups
suggests that the mechanisms that shape patterns of diversity are not
identical, and that identifying and incorporating specific biodiversity
indicators for understudied groups into conservation policy is necessary
to ensure their protection.