Exploring the efficiency of Evolutionary Distinctness in conservation prioritization

In this Age of Extinction, we must prioritize the species we want to conserve. Conservation programs use different metrics for species prioritization, but more work is needed linking these metrics to particular aspects of biodiversity value. Here, I focus on the species-specific conservation metric of Evolutionary Distinctness (ED) designed to identify species with few close relatives. I first explore the relationship between ED and a presumed valuable attribute, the average rarity of traits. Using simulations, I find high degrees of association between ED and trait rarity; however unlike another metric of isolation (Average Pairwise Distance) this ability decreases as higher gamma clades are sampled. I then examine, under different scenarios of extinction, how well ED captures a related touted value, total phylogenetic diversity (PD). I find a very strong correlation between PD and ED across all surveyed trees. Overall, ED is not perfect, but shows some promise as a simple conservation metric, capturing at least two related measures of biodiversity value

Expanding the scope and roles of social sciences and humanities to support integrated ecosystem assessments and ecosystem-based management

Understanding social-ecological systems (SESs) is an important part of ecosystem-based management (EBM). One of the main decision support frameworks to develop scientific advice for EBM is integrated ecosystem assessments (IEAs). Human dimensions in SESs are primarily captured through indicators derived from three social sciences: economics, anthropology, and sociology. The breadth of social sciences and humanities (SSH) research is much greater than those three fields, but they are generally underused in natural science-based decision support processes such as IEAs. Greater contributions of SSHs can enhance IEAs through various direct (e.g. to develop indicators) and indirect ways (e.g. to establish and maintain ethical practices). We examine a wider range of SSH disciplines and conclude that scientific advice processes that inform EBM can benefit from broader integration of SSH theories and methods through themes of contextualizing, facilitating, communicating, evaluating, and anticipating. We see this an opportunity to both widen the vocabulary used to describe social scientists and those who work in humanities in IEAs, and apply the underlying worldviews used to conduct SSH research to fundamentally enhance the IEA process and to further progress in EBM