Taxonomic Exaggeration and Its Effects on Orchid Conservation

Abstract:  Orchids are the largest family of flowering plants, encompassing several times as many species as birds or mammals. Because of their diversity, charisma, and threats from overcollection and habitat loss, they are a key group in conservation. Nevertheless, preservation of this group is plagued by taxonomic problems, particularly in Europe, where new taxa are actively being described. We used a checklist of orchids to compare the taxonomic treatment of this family between Europe and neighboring areas to search for geographical patterns. Numbers of invalid, infraspecific, and hybrid names are significantly higher in Europe than in surrounding areas. Recognition of numerous and poorly circumscribed orchid taxa is a serious obstacle to their conservation because rare, poorly defined species may be prioritized for conservation over taxonomically "good" species. This phenomenon may be the result of the popularity of orchids in Europe. We believe that more taxonomic effort should be made in other areas of the world (e.g., the tropics) and on less charismatic groups.     

Diagnosing Units of Conservation Management

Species-oriented conservation programs attempt to analyze and maintain intra-specific variation in order to maximally preserve biological diversity. The "evolutionarily significant unit" has become an operational term for a group of organisms that should be the minimial unit for conservation management. No generally accepted definition for this term exists that would be the basis for the evaluation of these units in practical conservation situations. Currently, taxonomic decisions in species conservation are mostly based on the biological species concept. But the universal application of criteria of reproductive isolation or phenetic similarity to delimit conservation units is problematical. We favor a definition for evolutionarily significant units based on patterns of variation. In the theoretical framework of the phylogenetic species concept, conservation units are delimited by characters that diagnose clusters of individuals or populations to the exclusion of other such clusters. Characters are used for cladistic analysis to infer hypotheses of the phylogenetic relationships of individuals, and differentiated populations are diagnosed using population aggregation analysis. Characters can be based on genetic, morphological, ecological, or behavioral information, provided they are inferred to be heritable. The use of cladistics and population aggregation analysis has the potential to make the evaluation of evoluntionarily significant units objective and testable, an important consideration in politically controversial cases. Our cladistic approach is demonstrated by the evaluation of potential conservation units in the endangered tiger beetles Cicindela dorsalis and C. puritana .     

Taxonomic and Conservation Status of the Yuma Mountain Lion

Confusion persists over the taxonomic status and viability of the Yuma mountain lion ( Felis concolor browni ). We conducted a review of the literature on lions in the American Southwest and interviewed resource and public-land managers and wildlife researchers to help us understand the current status of the Yuma mountain lion. We also contacted museums and assembled the most complete set of morphometric data on the Yuma mountain lion. Few if any breeding female lions, a paucity of prey, and a lack of suitable habitat within the reported range of this population cast doubt on its status. We conclude that subspecific status is probably not warranted.     

Efficiency and Concordance of Alternative Methods for Minimizing Opportunity Costs in Conservation Planning

Abstract:  Scarce resources and competing land-use goals necessitate efficient biodiversity conservation. Combining multicriteria analysis with conservation decision-support tools improves efficiency of conservation planning by maximizing outcomes for biodiversity while minimizing opportunity costs to society. An opportunity cost is the benefit that could have been received by taking an alternative course of action (i.e., costs to society of protecting an area for biodiversity rather than developing it for some other use). Although different ways of integrating multiple opportunity costs into conservation planning have been suggested, there have been no tests as to which method is most efficient. We compared the relative efficiency of 3 such procedures ( Faith & Walker [1996] , Sarkar et al. [2004] , and a procedure of our own design) in a systematic conservation-planning framework for the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. We devised 14 opportunity costs and assigned these to 3 scenarios representing different conservation planning concerns: food security, macro-economic development, and biodiversity persistence. For each scenario, we compared the efficiency of the 3 methods in terms of amount of biodiversity protected relative to total expenditure for each opportunity cost. All 3 methods captured similar amounts of biodiversity, but differed in total cost. Our method had the least overall cost and was therefore most efficient. Nevertheless, there was a high correlation and geographical concordance among all 3 methods, indicating a high degree of spatial overlap. This suggests that choosing an appropriate approach may often depend on contextual factors related to the design of the planning question, rather than efficiency alone.     

Using Strategic Foresight to Assess Conservation Opportunity

The nature of conservation challenges can foster a reactive, rather than proactive approach to decision making. Failure to anticipate problems before they escalate results in the need for more costly and time‐consuming solutions. Proactive conservation requires forward‐looking approaches to decision making that consider possible futures without being overly constrained by the past. Strategic foresight provides a structured process for considering the most desirable future and for mapping the most efficient and effective approaches to promoting that future with tools that facilitate creative thinking. The process involves 6 steps: setting the scope, collecting inputs, analyzing signals, interpreting the information, determining how to act, and implementing the outcomes. Strategic foresight is ideal for seeking, recognizing, and realizing conservation opportunities because it explicitly encourages a broad‐minded, forward‐looking perspective on an issue. Despite its potential value, the foresight process is rarely used to address conservation issues, and previous attempts have generally failed to influence policy. We present the strategic foresight process as it can be used for proactive conservation planning, describing some of the key tools in the foresight tool kit and how they can be used to identify and exploit different types of conservation opportunities. Scanning is an important tool for collecting and organizing diverse streams of information and can be used to recognize new opportunities and those that could be created. Scenario planning explores how current trends, drivers of change, and key uncertainties might influence the future and can be used to identify barriers to opportunities. Backcasting is used to map out a path to a goal and can determine how to remove barriers to opportunities. We highlight how the foresight process was used to identify conservation opportunities during the development of a strategic plan to address climate change in New York State. The plan identified solutions that should be effective across a range of possible futures. Illustrating the application of strategic foresight to identify conservation opportunities should provide the impetus for decision makers to explore strategic foresight as a way to support more proactive conservation policy, planning, and management.     

Sample Size for the Diagnosis of Conservation Units

Abstract: Use of the phylogenetic species concept in defining conservation units is based on the assumption that the fixation of a particular character state in a population is diagnostic of a long history of reproductive isolation. In practice, diagnosis is usually based on the character states of a small sample of individuals rather than the states of the entire population. Unfortunately, when sample sizes are small, samples in which all individuals share one character state can easily be drawn from populations that are actually polymorphic. I describe statistical methods for examining how much confidence can be placed in the diagnosis of a conservation unit, given the operative sample size. The methods estimate the probability of drawing a sample in which all individuals show the same state, if individuals with unsampled ( hidden) states actually exist in the population at some hypothetical frequency (e.g., 0.05). I considered finite and infinite population-size models. The infinite population-size model suggests that in order to reject with 95% confidence the hypothesis that 5% of individuals carry hidden character states, a sample of 59 individuals is necessary. Finite population-size models give slightly smaller critical sample sizes for diagnosis with 95% confidence. I describe methods for including the effect of uncertainty in estimating population size when calculating critical sample size, and I discuss extensions to multiple characters and the impact of spatial structuring of character states. My results suggest that confident diagnosis requires sample sizes much larger than those commonly used when the phylogenetic species concept is applied to defining conservation units.     

The Importance of Systematic Biology in Defining Units of Conservation

Abstract: Conservation biology is linked inextricably with systematic biology. The principles of systematic biology, however, have not been integrated completely into the practice and principles of conservation biology. Systematists have recognized for some time that a number of evolutionary processes lead to the diversification of lineages. Yet some present units of conservation, such as the evolutionarily significant unit ( Waples 1991), primarily emphasize only one of these processes, adaptation. Allopatric speciation produces biodiversity without requiring any adaptive shift (and consequent adaptive differences between daughter species), so definitions of conservation units that emphasize adaptation may underestimate biodiversity. We estimated the frequency of different modes of speciation for three groups of vertebrates. The frequency of allopatric speciation varies among these groups, but is an important type of speciation in two of the three groups studied. Our results, and the results of other published studies of the frequency of modes of speciation, demonstrate that any unit of conservation defined solely in terms of adaptation is likely to underestimate biological diversity.     

Conservation Prioritization Using GAP Data

Data collected by the Gap Analysis Program in the state of Idaho (U.S.A.) are used to prioritize the selection of locations for conservation action and research. Set coverage and integer programming algorithms provide a sequence of localities that maximize the number of species or vegetation classes represented at each step. Richness maps of vegetation cover class diversity, terrestrial vertebrate species diversity ("hot spot analysis"), endangered, threatened, and candidate species diversity, and unprotected vertebrate species diversity ("gap analysis"), when prioritized, show a rapid accumulation of species as more localities are chosen for terrestrial vertebrates and unprotected vertebrates. Gap analysis identifies four target areas ("gaps") that include 79 of the 83 vertebrate species not currently protected. Accumulation of vegetation cover classes and endangered, threatened, and candidate species is much slower. Sweep analysis is used to determine how well prioritizing on one component of diversity accumulates other components. Endangered, threatened, and candidate species do not sweep total vertebrates as well as unprotected vertebrates do, but are better than vegetation classes. Total vertebrates sweep endangered, threatened, and candidate species better than unprotected vertebrates do, which in turn are better than vegetation classes. We emphasize that prioritization must be part of conservation efforts at multiple scales and that prioritization points out important localities where more detailed work mast be undertaken.     

Using a Systematic Approach to Select Flagship Species for Bird Conservation

Conservation marketing campaigns that focus on flagship species play a vital role in biological diversity conservation because they raise funds and change people's behavior. However, most flagship species are selected without considering the target audience of the campaign, which can hamper the campaign's effectiveness. To address this problem, we used a systematic and stakeholder‐driven approach to select flagship species for a conservation campaign in the Serra do Urubu in northeastern Brazil. We based our techniques on environmental economic and marketing methods. We used choice experiments to examine the species attributes that drive preference and latent‐class models to segment respondents into groups by preferences and socioeconomic characteristics. We used respondent preferences and information on bird species inhabiting the Serra do Urubu to calculate a flagship species suitability score. We also asked respondents to indicate their favorite species from a set list to enable comparison between methods. The species’ traits that drove audience preference were geographic distribution, population size, visibility, attractiveness, and survival in captivity. However, the importance of these factors differed among groups and groups differed in their views on whether species with small populations and the ability to survive in captivity should be prioritized. The popularity rankings of species differed between approaches, a result that was probably related to the different ways in which the 2 methods measured preference. Our new approach is a transparent and evidence‐based method that can be used to refine the way stakeholders are engaged in the design of conservation marketing campaigns.