TY - JOUR
T1 - Phylogenetic Diversity Rankings in the Face of Extinctions
T2 - The Robustness of the Fair Proportion Index
AU - Fischer, Mareike
AU - Francis, Andrew
AU - Wicke, Kristina
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the Society of Systematic Biologists. All rights reserved.
PY - 2023/5/1
Y1 - 2023/5/1
N2 - Planning for the protection of species often involves difficult choices about which species to prioritize, given constrained resources. One way of prioritizing species is to consider their "evolutionary distinctiveness,"(ED) that is, their relative evolutionary isolation on a phylogenetic tree. Several evolutionary isolation metrics or phylogenetic diversity indices have been introduced in the literature, among them the so-called Fair Proportion (FP) index (also known as the ED score). This index apportions the total diversity of a tree among all leaves, thereby providing a simple prioritization criterion for conservation. Here, we focus on the prioritization order obtained from the FP index and analyze the effects of species extinction on this ranking. More precisely, we analyze the extent to which the ranking order may change when some species go extinct and the FP index is recomputed for the remaining taxa. We show that for each phylogenetic tree, there are edge lengths such that the extinction of one leaf per cherry completely reverses the ranking. Moreover, we show that even if only the lowest-ranked species goes extinct, the ranking order may drastically change. We end by analyzing the effects of these two extinction scenarios (extinction of the lowest-ranked species and extinction of one leaf per cherry) for a collection of empirical and simulated trees. In both cases, we can observe significant changes in the prioritization orders, highlighting the empirical relevance of our theoretical findings. [Biodiversity conservation; Fair Proportion index; phylogenetic diversity; species prioritization.]
AB - Planning for the protection of species often involves difficult choices about which species to prioritize, given constrained resources. One way of prioritizing species is to consider their "evolutionary distinctiveness,"(ED) that is, their relative evolutionary isolation on a phylogenetic tree. Several evolutionary isolation metrics or phylogenetic diversity indices have been introduced in the literature, among them the so-called Fair Proportion (FP) index (also known as the ED score). This index apportions the total diversity of a tree among all leaves, thereby providing a simple prioritization criterion for conservation. Here, we focus on the prioritization order obtained from the FP index and analyze the effects of species extinction on this ranking. More precisely, we analyze the extent to which the ranking order may change when some species go extinct and the FP index is recomputed for the remaining taxa. We show that for each phylogenetic tree, there are edge lengths such that the extinction of one leaf per cherry completely reverses the ranking. Moreover, we show that even if only the lowest-ranked species goes extinct, the ranking order may drastically change. We end by analyzing the effects of these two extinction scenarios (extinction of the lowest-ranked species and extinction of one leaf per cherry) for a collection of empirical and simulated trees. In both cases, we can observe significant changes in the prioritization orders, highlighting the empirical relevance of our theoretical findings. [Biodiversity conservation; Fair Proportion index; phylogenetic diversity; species prioritization.]
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U2 - 10.1093/sysbio/syac030
DO - 10.1093/sysbio/syac030
M3 - Article
C2 - 35412636
AN - SCOPUS:85163834940
SN - 1063-5157
VL - 72
SP - 606
EP - 615
JO - Systematic Biology
JF - Systematic Biology
IS - 3
ER -