Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Volume 115, Issue 13, Pages 3404-3409Publisher
NATL ACAD SCIENCES
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1714599115
Keywords
conservation translocations; conservation priorities; phylogenetic diversity; evolutionary isolation
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Funding
- Reseau de Recherche sur le Developpement Soutenable of the Ile-de-France region, France
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Reintroductions offer a powerful tool for reversing the effects of species extirpation and have been increasingly used over recent decades. However, this species-centered conservation approach has been criticized for its strong biases toward charismatic birds and mammals. Here, we investigated whether reintroduced species can be representative of the phylogenetic diversity within these two groups at a continental scale (i.e., Europe, North and Central America). Using null models, we found that reintroduced birds and mammals of the two subcontinents tend to be more evolutionarily distinct than expected by chance, despite strong taxonomic biases leading to low values of phylogenetic diversity. While evolutionary considerations are unlikely to have explicitly driven the allocation of reintroduction efforts, our results illustrate an interest of reintroduction practitioners toward species with fewer close relatives. We discuss how this phylogenetic framework allows us to investigate the contribution of reintroductions to the conservation of biodiversity at multiple geographic scales. We argue that because reintroductions rely on a parochial approach of conservation, it is important to first understand how the motivations and constraints at stake at a local context can induce phylogenetic biases before trying to assess the relevance of the allocation of reintroduction efforts at larger scales.
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