Abstract
Biodiversity, as we see it today, ultimately is the outcome of millions of years of evolution; however, biodiversity in its multiple dimensions is changing rapidly due to increasing human domination of Earth. Here, we present the “phylogenetic completeness” (PC) a concept and methodology that intends to safeguard Earth’s evolutionary assets that have arisen across the tree of life. We performed a global evaluation of the PC approach using data from five major terrestrial clades and compared the results to an approach in which species are conserved or lost randomly. We demonstrate that under PC, it is possible to maximize the protection of greater evolutionary assets of each clade for a given number of species extinctions. The PC approach is flexible and can be used to assess biodiversity under different conservation scenarios. The PC approach complements existing conservation efforts and is linked to the post-2020 Convention of Biodiversity targets.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.