The Biodiversity Crisis: Lessons from Phylogenetic Sagas

Abstract

The future of the world's biodiversity involves preservation of individual species and, more importantly, preservation of the natural process by which the biosphere is populated. Inherited history allows species to carry within them the ability to adapt to changing circumstances. But inherited history also sets the limits for adaptation. Evolutionary potential is thus locked within shared history. Extinction removes, speciation replenishes. We must implement conservation policies that mimic the biotic expansion that sets the stage for speciation. If we do not provide space for species to spread out and find their own futures, building biodiversity reserves is tantamount to attempting to maintain standing diversity by blocking evolution. We must preserve as many species, associations, and places as possible in a geographic context large enough so that individual species may expand and contract and evolutionary dynamics can have free rein to shape the future.