PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - J. N. Griffin
AU  - F. Leprieur
AU  - D. Silvestro
AU  - J. S. Lefcheck
AU  - C. Albouy
AU  - D. B. Rasher
AU  - M. Davis
AU  - J.-C. Svenning
AU  - C. Pimiento
TI  - Functionally unique, specialised, and endangered (FUSE) species: towards integrated metrics for the conservation prioritisation toolbox
AID  - 10.1101/2020.05.09.084871
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.05.09.084871
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/10/2020.05.09.084871.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/05/10/2020.05.09.084871.full
AB  - Identifying species with disproportionate contributions to biodiversity can lead to effective conservation prioritisation. Despite well-established methods for identifying endangered species adding inordinately to evolutionary diversity, in this context functional diversity has been overlooked. Here, we compare different metrics designed to identify threatened species that contribute strongly to functional diversity. We use the diverse and threatened global marine megafauna as a case study. We found that functional contributions of species are not fully captured in a single metric. Although we found a very strong correlation between functional specialisation and distinctiveness, functional uniqueness was only moderately correlated with the other two metrics and identified a different set of top-10 species. These functional contributions were then integrated and combined with extinction risk to identify species that are both important contributors to functional diversity and endangered. For instance, the top-10 Functionally Unique Specialized and Endangered (FUSE) species contains three critically endangered, five endangered and two vulnerable species which - despite comprising only 3% of species - are among the top 10% most functionally unique and hold 15% of the global functional richness. The FUSE index was remarkably robust to different mathematical formulations. Combining one or more facets of a species contribution to functional diversity with endangerment, such as with the FUSE index, adds to the toolbox for conservation prioritisation. Nevertheless, we discuss how these new tools must be handled with care alongside other metrics and information.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.