Integrating biosystematic data into conservation planning: perspectives from southern Africa's Succulent Karoo

In this paper we explore the role that biosystematists can play in conservation planning. Conservation planning concerns the location and design of reserves that both represent the biodiversity of a region and enable the persistence of that biodiversity by maintaining key ecological and evolutionary processes. For conservation planning to be effective, quantitative targets are needed for the spatial components of a region that reflect evolutionary processes. Using examples from southern Africa's Succulent Karoo, we demonstrate how spatially explicit data on morphological variation within taxa provide essential information for conservation planning in that such variation represents an important surrogate for the spatial component of lineage diversification. We also provide an example of how the spatial components of evolutionary processes can be identified and targeted for conservation action. Key to this understanding are the recognition and description of taxonomic units at all spatial scales. Without the recognition of subspecific variation, it is difficult to formulate evolutionary hypotheses, let alone set quantitative targets for the conservation of this variation. Given the escalating threats to biodiversity, and the importance of planning for persistence by incorporating ecological and evolutionary processes into conservation plans, it is essential that systematists develop hypotheses on the spatial surrogates for these processes for a wide range of lineages. The important questions for systematists to be asking are (1) how is variation distributed in the landscape, and (2) how did it come about? Conservation planners too need to highlight these spatial components for conservation action.