ArticleNature communications2018
Prioritizing phylogenetic diversity captures functional diversity unreliably.
Article in Nature communications, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 60 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
60 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Multidimensional β-diversity responses to global change: a meta-analysis highlighting divergent effects on plant communities.Nature communications · 2025Pooled it
- A trait-based framework for seagrass ecology: Trends and prospects.Frontiers in plant science · 2023Pooled it
- Towards evidence-based conservation of subterranean ecosystems.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2022Pooled it
- Multidimensional Diversity Identifies Mountains as Key Refugia for Caudata in China.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Increases in species richness cause decreases in phylogenetic diversity in Mediterranean and Temperate plant assemblages.Ecology · 2026Article
- Eco-Evolutionary Dynamics of Generalist and Specialist Pollinators Facing Plant Diversity Changes.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- A Multi-Taxa Approach to Estuarine Biomonitoring: Assessing Vertebrate Biodiversity and Ecological Continuity Using Environmental DNA Metabarcoding in the Rance River (Brittany, France).Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Multidimensional analyses of reptile assemblages: insights from phylogenetic, functional, and taxonomic diversity.Current zoology · 2026Article
- Multifaceted Assessment of Amazonian Tree Diversity Reveals Pervasive Impacts of Human Modification.Global change biology · 2025Article
- Spatial Phylogenetics Reveals Endemism Hotspots and Conservation Priorities in Chinese Asteraceae.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Functional and Phylogenetic Structure of Forest Bird Assemblages Along an Afrotropical Elevational Gradient.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Desiccation-Tolerant Vascular Plants: A Group of Species Largely Neglected in Conservation.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Multitrophic and Multidimensional Insights into Biodiversity and Functional Trait Responses to Precipitation Changes in Alpine Grasslands.Microorganisms · 2025Article
- CaecilianTraits, an individual level trait database of Caecilians worldwide.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Neutral phylogenetic models and their role in tree-based biodiversity measures.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- EutherianCoP. An integrated biotic and climate database for conservation paleobiology based on eutherian mammals.Scientific data · 2025Article
- Accounting for functionality in the identification of global conservation priorities: promises and pitfalls.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Species diversity within morpho-functional groups drives diversity dependence in reef ecosystems.PloS one · 2025Article
- Article
- Ecological drivers of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic diversity of bryophytes in an oceanic island.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In the face of the biodiversity crisis, it is argued that we should prioritize species in order to capture high functional diversity (FD). Because species traits often reflect shared evolutionary history, many researchers have assumed that maximizing phylogenetic diversity (PD) should indirectly capture FD, a hypothesis that we name the "phylogenetic gambit". Here, we empirically test this gambit using data on ecologically relevant traits from >15,000 vertebrate species. Specifically, we estimate a measure of surrogacy of PD for FD. We find that maximizing PD results in an average gain of 18% of FD relative to random choice. However, this average gain obscures the fact that in over one-third of the comparisons, maximum PD sets contain less FD than randomly chosen sets of species. These results suggest that, while maximizing PD protection can help to protect FD, it represents a risky conservation strategy.
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