Advancing EDGE Zones to identify spatial conservation priorities of tetrapod evolutionary history
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
The biodiversity crisis is pruning the Tree of Life in a way that threatens billions of years of evolutionary history and there is a need to understand where the greatest losses are predicted to occur. We therefore present threatened evolutionary history mapped for all tetrapod groups and describe patterns of Evolutionarily Distinct and Globally Endangered (EDGE) species. Using a complementarity procedure with uncertainty incorporated for 33,628 species, we identify 25 priority tetrapod EDGE Zones, which are insufficiently protected and disproportionately exposed to high human pressure. Tetrapod EDGE Zones are spread over five continents, 33 countries, and 117 ecoregions. Together, they occupy 0.723% of the world’s surface but harbour one-third of the world’s threatened evolutionary history and EDGE tetrapod species, half of which is endemic. These EDGE Zones highlight areas of immediate concern for researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and communicators looking to safeguard the tetrapod Tree of Life.
Date Issued
2024-09-03
Date Acceptance
2024-08-22
Citation
Nature Communications, 2024, 15
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Portfolio
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
15
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-51992-5
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
7672
Date Publish Online
2024-09-03