Conserving phylogenetic diversity can be a poor strategy for conserving functional diversity

For decades, academic biologists have advocated for making conservation decisions in light of evolutionary history. Specifically, they suggest that policy makers should prioritize conserving phylogenetically diverse assemblages. The most prominent argument is that conserving phylogenetic diversity (PD) will also conserve diversity in traits and features (functional diversity [FD]), which may be valuable for a number of reasons. The claim that PD-maximized (“maxPD”) sets of taxa will also have high FD is often taken at face value and in cases where researchers have actually tested it, they have done so by measuring the phylogenetic signal in ecologically important functional traits. The rationale is that if traits closely mirror phylogeny, then saving the maxPD set of taxa will tend to maximize FD and if traits do not have phylogenetic structure, then saving the maxPD set of taxa will be no better at capturing FD than criteria that ignore PD. Here, we suggest that measuring the phylogene...

数十年来，学术生物学家一直倡导依据进化历史制定保护决策。具体而言，他们建议政策制定者应优先保护系统发育多样的类群组合。其中最具影响力的论点为：保护系统发育多样性（phylogenetic diversity, PD）同时也能保护性状与特征的多样性——即功能多样性（functional diversity, FD），而该多样性因多重原因具备重要价值。“最大化系统发育多样性（即"maxPD"）的类群集合同样具备较高功能多样性”这一主张常被直接采信；在实际开展检验的研究中，学者均通过测定生态重要功能性状的系统发育信号来完成验证。其背后的逻辑为：若性状与系统发育高度吻合，那么保护maxPD类群集合往往也能实现功能多样性最大化；若性状不存在系统发育结构，那么相较于忽略系统发育多样性的保护标准，保护maxPD类群集合在获取功能多样性方面并无优势。在此，我们提出对系统发育