Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Setting Conservation Priorities: The Importance of Endemism and Phylogeny in the Southern African Orchid Genus Herschelia

Setting Conservation Priorities: The Importance of Endemism and Phylogeny in the Southern African... The southern and south‐central African terrestrial orchid genus Herschelia contains several rare and endangered species. The distribution patterns of the species were assessed and classified into the Rabinowitz rarity categories. The degree of rarity was correlated with habitat types and with the phylogenetic history. Of the 16 species recognized, two are too poorly known to be assessed further. Of the remainder, three species are shown to be “metaspecies,” which can be interpreted as being ancestral to five narrowly endemic species. A. strong correlation between the age of the habitats, the relative age of the species, and the degree of rarity was demonstrated. I review the phylogenetic criteria for prioritizing species for conservation, and I develop a new criterion, the ability of a species to speciate into “new” environments. This suggests that it might be better to conserve metaspecies, which are found in the mountains, rather than the autapomorphic daughter species, which are found in the ephemeral habitats of the lowlands. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Conservation Biology Wiley

Setting Conservation Priorities: The Importance of Endemism and Phylogeny in the Southern African Orchid Genus Herschelia

Linder, H.P.
Conservation Biology , Volume 9 (3) – Jun 1, 1995
Download PDF
11 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/wiley/setting-conservation-priorities-the-importance-of-endemism-and-hmm7ChQFX3

References (0)

References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 Wiley Subscription Services, Inc., A Wiley Company
ISSN
0888-8892
eISSN
1523-1739
DOI
10.1046/j.1523-1739.1995.09030585.x
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The southern and south‐central African terrestrial orchid genus Herschelia contains several rare and endangered species. The distribution patterns of the species were assessed and classified into the Rabinowitz rarity categories. The degree of rarity was correlated with habitat types and with the phylogenetic history. Of the 16 species recognized, two are too poorly known to be assessed further. Of the remainder, three species are shown to be “metaspecies,” which can be interpreted as being ancestral to five narrowly endemic species. A. strong correlation between the age of the habitats, the relative age of the species, and the degree of rarity was demonstrated. I review the phylogenetic criteria for prioritizing species for conservation, and I develop a new criterion, the ability of a species to speciate into “new” environments. This suggests that it might be better to conserve metaspecies, which are found in the mountains, rather than the autapomorphic daughter species, which are found in the ephemeral habitats of the lowlands.

Journal

Conservation Biology – Wiley

Published: Jun 1, 1995

There are no references for this article.