Phylogenetically-Informed Priorities for Amphibian Conservation

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 7; no. 8; p. e43912
• Main Authors: Isaac, Nick J. B., Redding, David W., Meredith, Helen M., Safi, Kamran
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Public Library of Science 30.08.2012; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Amphibia; Amphibians; Amphibians - classification; Analysis; Animals; Biodiversity; Biological evolution; Biology; Conservation; Conservation of Natural Resources - methods; Endangered & extinct species; Endangered species; Endangered Species - statistics & numerical data; Environmental aspects; Extinct species; Extinction, Biological; Phylogenetics; Phylogeny; Priorities; Protection and preservation; Reptiles & amphibians; Risk Assessment; Robustness; Sensitivity analysis; Species diversity; Species extinction; Uncertainty; Wildlife conservation; United Kingdom; United Kingdom > UK; United States > US; Germany
• ISSN: 1932-6203; 1932-6203
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0043912

The amphibian decline and extinction crisis demands urgent action to prevent further large numbers of species extinctions. Lists of priority species for conservation, based on a combination of species' threat status and unique contribution to phylogenetic diversity, are one tool for the direction and catalyzation of conservation action. We describe the construction of a near-complete species-level phylogeny of 5713 amphibian species, which we use to create a list of evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered species (EDGE list) for the entire class Amphibia. We present sensitivity analyses to test the robustness of our priority list to uncertainty in species' phylogenetic position and threat status. We find that both sources of uncertainty have only minor impacts on our 'top 100' list of priority species, indicating the robustness of the approach. By contrast, our analyses suggest that a large number of Data Deficient species are likely to be high priorities for conservation action from the perspective of their contribution to the evolutionary history.