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For decades, academic biologists have advocated for making conservation decisions in light of evolutionary history. Specifically, they suggest that policy makers should prioritize conserving phylogenetically diverse assemblages. The most prominent argument is that conserving phylogenetic diversity (PD) will also conserve diversity in traits and features (functional diversity [FD]), which may be valuable for a number of reasons. The claim that PD-maximized (“maxPD”) sets of taxa will also have high FD is often taken at face value and in cases where researchers have actually tested it, they have done so by measuring the phylogenetic signal in ecologically important functional traits. The rationale is that if traits closely mirror phylogeny, then saving the maxPD set of taxa will tend to maximize FD and if traits do not have phylogenetic structure, then saving the maxPD set of taxa will be no better at capturing FD than criteria that ignore PD. Here, we suggest that measuring the phylogenetic signal in traits is uninformative for evaluating the effectiveness of using PD in conservation. We evolve traits under several different models and, for the first time, directly compare the FD of a set of taxa that maximize PD to the FD of a random set of the same size. Under many common models of trait evolution and tree shapes, conserving the maxPD set of taxa will conserve more FD than conserving a random set of the same size. However, this result cannot be generalized to other classes of models. We find that under biologically plausible scenarios, using PD to select species can actually lead to less FD compared with a random set. Critically, this can occur even when there is phylogenetic signal in the traits. Predicting exactly when we expect using PD to be a good strategy for conserving FD is challenging, as it depends on complex interactions between tree shape and the assumptions of the evolutionary model. Nonetheless, if our goal is to maintain trait diversity, the fact that conserving taxa based on PD will not reliably conserve at least as much FD as choosing randomly raises serious concerns about the general utility of PD in conservation.

1. Climate and land-use change are expected to substantially alter future plant species distributions leading to higher extinction rates. However, little is known about how plant species ranges, richness and phylogenetic diversity of continents will be affected by these dynamics. 2. We address this gap here by examining the patterns of species' distributions and phylogenetic relationships for 7465 seed plant taxa in North America. An ensemble of species distribution models was used to estimate the potential suitable habitat of species under different sets of climate, land-use and dispersal constraint scenarios. We then evaluated the vulnerability and extinction risk of individual species to changes in climate and land use, and examined whether rare, endangered and evolutionarily distinct species were disproportionally threatened by climate and land-use change. 3. We show that ~2000 species may lose > 80% of their suitable habitats under the A1b emission scenario for the 2080s, while ~100 species may experience > 80% range expansions (a 20 : 1 ratio of loss to gain). When considering > 50% range retraction and expansion, the ratio of loss to gain was 13 : 1. A greater loss of species diversity is expected at low latitudes, while larger gains are expected at high latitudes. Evolutionarily distinct species are predicted to have significantly higher extinction risks than extant species. This suggests a disproportionate future loss of phylogenetic diversity for the North American flora. 4. Synthesis and applications. Our study provides continental-scale evidence of plant species extinction risk caused by future climate and land-use change, and highlights the importance of integrating phylogenetic measures into conservation risk assessments. This work provides insight into the status, trends and threats for a large share of North America's plant species by identifying risks and prioritizing conservation in a rapidly changing world.

The tropical conservatism hypothesis (TCH) posits that the latitudinal gradient in biological diversity arises because most extant clades of animals and plants originated when tropical environments were more widespread and because the colonization of colder and more seasonal temperate environments is limited by the phylogenetically conserved environmental tolerances of these tropical clades. Recent studies have claimed support of the TCH, indicating that temperate plant diversity stems from a fewmore recently derived lineages that are nested within tropical clades, with the colonization of the temperate zone being associated with key adaptations to survive colder temperatures and regular freezing. Drought, however, is an additional physiological stress that could shape diversity gradients. Here, we evaluate patterns of evolutionary diversity in plant assemblages spanning the full extent of climatic gradients in North and South America. We find that in both hemispheres, extratropical dry biomes house the lowest evolutionary diversity, while tropical moist forests and many temperatemixed forests harbor the highest. Together, our results support a more nuanced view of the TCH, with environments that are radically different from the ancestral niche of angiosperms having limited, phylogenetically clustered diversity relative to environments that show lower levels of deviation from this niche. Thus, we argue that ongoing expansion of arid environments is likely to entail higher loss of evolutionary diversity not just in the wet tropics but in many extratropical moist regions as well.

Aim The ecosystem functions and services of coral reefs are critical for coastal communities worldwide. Due to conservation resource limitation, species need to be prioritized to protect desirable properties of biodiversity, such as functional diversity (FD), which has been associated with greater ecosystem functioning but is difficult to quantify directly. Selecting species to maximize phylogenetic diversity (PD) has been shown to indirectly capture FD in certain other taxa but not corals. Here, we test this hypothesis, the “phylogenetic gambit”, on corals within global marine protected areas (MPAs). Location Global coral reefs. Methods Based on the global distributions of reef corals, a complete species‐level phylogeny and trait data, we compared the FD of coral assemblages within MPAs when selected to maximize PD versus FD for assemblages selected randomly. The relationships between PD and FD were also tested as predictors of surrogacy. We then used coral FD and PD to perform spatial prioritization of reefs for protection and assessed the congruence between the two approaches. Results Selecting assemblages to maximize PD captured significantly more FD than a random subset of species for 83.1% of all selection scenarios across MPAs and would protect on average 18.7% more FD than random selection. Spatial prioritization analyses showed some mismatches between PD‐ and FD‐optimized planning units, particularly in the Tropical Western Atlantic, but the high degree of overlap between the optimizations for other reef regions lends further credence to the PD‐maximizing strategy in conserving coral FD. Main Conclusions A PD‐maximizing strategy generally protects greater FD of coral assemblages relative to random selection of species, suggesting that the “phylogenetic gambit” is valid for reef corals. There are risks, however, and the mismatches between PD‐maximized and FD‐maximized MPA networks highlight specific shortcomings of the PD‐maximization approach. Nevertheless, in data‐deficient circumstances, maximizing PD may provide a viable alternative.

Understanding the mechanisms governing biodiversity-biomass relationships across temporal and spatial scales is essential for elucidating how abiotic and biotic factors influence ecosystem function in natural forests. However, the simultaneous contributions of multiple abiotic (e.g., topography) and biotic factors (e.g., structural diversity) to aboveground biomass dynamics (ΔAGB) over time and across habitat types remain inadequately understood. To address this gap, we evaluated changes in aboveground biomass across a decade and various habitats, disentangling the relative influences of topography and multidimensional diversity on ΔAGB through datasets from forest inventories conducted between 2007 and 2017, along with phylogenetic relatedness, functional traits, and environmental variables from a subtropical forest in China. Our findings indicate that aboveground biomass at community level experienced a significant decline followed by an increase over the decade, predominantly driven by changes in the low-valley habitat. In contrast, no statistically significant alterations were detected in the aboveground biomass of mid-hillside and high-ridge habitats. Furthermore, the determinants of ΔAGB exhibited temporal variation. During the 2007-2012 period, ΔAGB was primarily influenced by functional and structural diversity, accounting for 66.11% and 21.35% of relative importance, respectively. In the subsequent 2012-2017 period, phylogenetic and structural diversity emerged as key factors, explaining 48.46% and 36.43% of relative importance, respectively. Additionally, we observed that the drivers and effects impacting ΔAGB exhibited significant variability across different habitat types. In summary, our study underscores the significant spatiotemporal dependence of abiotic and biotic drivers on biomass dynamics within forest ecosystems, thereby enhancing our understanding of the complex biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships.

Targeting phylogenetic diversity (PD) in systematic conservation planning is an efficient way to minimize losses across the Tree of Life. Considering representation of genetic diversity below and above species level, also allows robust analyses within systems where taxonomy is in flux. We use dense sampling of phylogeographic diversity for 11 lizard genera, to demonstrate how PD can be applied to a policy‐ready conservation planning problem. Our analysis bypasses named taxa, using genetic data directly to inform conservation decisions. We highlight areas that should be prioritized for ecological management, and also areas that would provide the greatest benefit if added to the multisector conservation estate. We provide a rigorous and effective approach to represent the spectrum of genetic and species diversity in conservation planning.

Aim Forecasting potential patterns in species' distributions and diversity under climate change is crucial for biodiversity conservation. Although high-latitude regions are expected to experience some of the greatest increases in temperature due to global warming, little is known on how individual responses in species will affect patterns in phylogenetic diversity (PD). Location Alberta, Canada. Methods We used 160,589 occurrence records for 1541 species of seed plants in Alberta (nearly 90% of the province's seed flora) and ensemble niche models to project current and future suitable habitats. We then examined climate change vulnerability of individual species and the potential impacts of climate change on species richness, PD and both taxonomic and phylogenetic endemism (PE). We also assessed whether predicted losses of PD were distributed randomly across the plant tree of life. Results We found that 368 species (24%) may lose on average > 80% of their current suitable climates (habitats), while 539 species (35%) were projected to more than double their current suitable range. Both species richness and PD were predicted to increase in most areas, except for the species-rich Rocky Mountains, which are predicted to experience future declines. Maps of taxonomic and PE identified several regions with high conservation value and climate change threat suggesting priorities for conservation and climate change adaptation. Overall, a non-random extinction risk was found for Alberta's flora, demonstrating potential future impacts of climate change on the loss of evolutionary history. Main conclusions Our analyses suggest that climate change will have asymmetrical effects on the distribution of Alberta's plant diversity and endemism and a non-random extinction risk of the current state of species evolutionary history. Our results provide practical guidance for biodiversity conservation and management in this region by prioritizing species' vulnerabilities and places with higher taxonomic or evolutionary risk due to future climate change.

Aim: The conversion of old-growth tropical forests into human-modified landscapes threatens biodiversity worldwide, but its impact on the phylogenetic dimension of remaining communities is still poorly known. Negative and neutral responses of tree phylogenetic diversity to land use change have been reported at local and landscape scales. Here, we hypothesized that such variable responses to disturbance depend on the regional context, being stronger in more degraded rain forest regions with a longer history of land use. Location: Six regions in Mexico and Brazil. Methods: We used a large vegetation database (6,923 trees from 686 species) recorded in 98 50-ha landscapes distributed across two Brazilian and four Mexican regions, which exhibit different degrees of disturbance. In each region, we assessed whether phylogenetic alpha and beta diversities were related to landscape-scale forest loss, the percentage of shade-intolerant species (a proxy of local disturbance) and/or the relatedness of decreasing (losers) and increasing (winners) taxa. Results: Contrary to our expectations, the percentage of forest cover and shade-intolerant species were weakly related to phylogenetic alpha and beta diversities in all but one region. Loser species were generally as dispersed across the phylogeny as winner species, allowing more degraded, deforested and species-poorer forests to sustain relatively high levels of evolutionary (phylogenetic) diversity. Main conclusion: Our findings support previous evidence indicating that traits related to high susceptibility to forest disturbances are convergent or have low phylogenetic signal. More importantly, they reveal that the evolutionary value of disturbed forests is (at least in a phylogenetic sense) much greater than previously thought.

Lectins are a large and diverse class of proteins, found in all kingdoms of life. Plants are known to express different types of carbohydrate-binding proteins, each containing at least one particular lectin domain which enables them to specifically recognize and bind carbohydrate structures. The group of plant lectins is heterogeneous in terms of structure, biological activity and function. Lectins control various aspects of plant development and defense. Some lectins facilitate recognition of exogenous danger signals or play a role in endogenous signaling pathways, while others are considered as storage proteins or involved in symbiotic relationships. In this study, we revisit the origin of the different plant lectin families in view of the recently reshaped tree of life. Due to new genomic sampling of previously unknown microbial lineages, the tree of life has expanded and was reshaped multiple times. In addition, more plant genomes especially from basal Phragmoplastophyta, bryophytes, and Salviniales (e.g., , and ) have been analyzed, and annotated genome sequences have become accessible. We searched 38 plant genome sequences including core eudicots, monocots, gymnosperms, fern, lycophytes, bryophytes, charophytes, chlorophytes, glaucophytes, and rhodophytes for lectin motifs, performed an extensive comparative analysis of lectin domain architectures, and determined the phylogenetic and evolutionary history of lectins in the plant lineage. In conclusion, we describe the conservation of particular domains in plant lectin sequences obtained from algae to higher plants. The strong conservation of several lectin motifs highlights their significance for plants.

CONTEXT: Detecting biotic resistance to biological invasions across large geographic areas may require acknowledging multiple metrics of niche usage and potential spatial heterogeneity in associations between invasive and native species diversity and dominance. OBJECTIVES: Determine (1) if native communities are resistant to biological invasions at macroscales; (2) the metrics that best quantify biotic resistance at these scales; and (3) the degree to which the direction and magnitude of invader-native associations vary with scale and/or location. METHODS: Using a mixed-effects modeling framework to account for potential sub-regional and cross-scale variability in invader-native associations, we modeled the species richness and cover of invasive plants in 42,626 plots located throughout Eastern USA forests in relationship to plot-level estimates of native tree biomass, species richness, and evolutionary diversity. RESULTS: We found (1) native tree biomass and evolutionary diversity, but not species richness, to be negatively associated with invader establishment and dominance, and thus indicative of biotic resistance; (2) evidence that evolutionary diversity limits invader dominance more than it does invader establishment; (3) evidence of greater invasion resistance in parts of the agriculturally-dominated Midwest and in and around the more-contiguous forests of the Appalachian Mountains; and (4) the magnitude to which native tree biomass and evolutionary diversity limit invasion varies across the ranges of these metrics. CONCLUSIONS: These findings illustrate the improved understanding of biotic resistance to invasions that is gained by accounting for sub-regional variability in ecological processes, and underscores the need to determine the factors leading to spatial heterogeneity in biotic resistance.