Summary of last weeks lecture

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Summary of last weeks lecture

• Taxonomy is the discovery and description of
  species.
• Systematics is the inference of relationships
  among species
• Bad taxonomy can kill! (e.g., the tuatara)
• Some 1.4-1.8 million species have been described.
• The best known groups (such as birds and mammals)
  are among the smallest taxonomically.
• Anywhere from 5 to 30 million species may inhabit
  the earth.
• Not all species are equal.

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What is so special about the tuatara?
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It is an ancient lineage
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Lecture 2

• Evolutionary measures of biodiversity
• Problems with these measures
• Measuring biodiversity of areas
• Selecting which areas to save
• WorldMap program

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Species richness versus evolutionary diversity
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Which two shapes are the most different?
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Maximising diversity is maximising the difference
amongst objects
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Which pair of reptiles should we save?
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Evolutionary independence(bird crocodile)
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time
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Evolutionary change(bird gtgt crocodile)
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Evolutionary change
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What would you save out of all of life?
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Problems with independent evolutionary history as
a measure of biodiversity

• May not measure all aspects of biodiversity that
  we consider to be important
• Doesn't take into account how different species
  are, only how long they have been independent.
• Can be difficult to measure
• Evolutionary trees require a lot of work to
  obtain (many living things may be extinct before
  we work out what they are related to).

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Using vegetation types to measure biodiversity
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Current conservation reserves
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Best possible reserves
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Complementarity, or which one do we save next?
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Summary

• Subtree length is a general approach to measuring
  biodiversity that takes into account a measure of
  difference among species (or areas)
• The measure of difference can be evolutionary
  independence, character divergence, DNA
  divergence, or ecological difference.
• The amount of the Earth's surface available for
  conservation is small!
• The key task, therefore, is to maximise the
  amount of biodiversity we can preserve in a
  limited number of reserves.
• The principle of complementarity can be used to
  choose which areas to preserve.