The problems with multi-species conservation: do hotspots, ideal reserves and existing reserves coincide?

Abstract

The investigation of six vertebrate taxa (viz freshwater fish, frogs, tortoises and terrapins, snakes, birds, and various mammal orders) at a national scale reveals that hotspots of species richness, endemism and rarity are not coincident within taxa. In order to design a more representative reserve system to protect all vertebrate species, a complementarity algorithm was applied to all taxa, combined and separately. The combined analysis yielded more efficient results (66 reserves are required to represent all 1074 species at least once) than the separate analyses (97 reserves). Many of these representative reserves coincide with both hotspots and existing reserves, and over 85% of the hotspots of most taxa coincide with existing reserves; thus South Africa's vertebrate fauna could be more effectively protected with only moderate acquisition of new, well-sited reserves. -from Author