Narrowly distributed taxa are disproportionately informative for conservation planning.

Area of Science:

• Conservation Biology
• Biodiversity Informatics
• Ecology

Background:

• Biological atlases are crucial for conservation decision-making but often lack frequent updates, posing challenges with rapidly changing species distributions.
• Effective strategies for updating biological atlas data are poorly understood, hindering efficient conservation planning.

Purpose of the Study:

• To quantitatively compare the informativeness and cost-efficiency of narrowly distributed versus widespread taxa for conservation target identification.
• To explore the mechanisms driving the informativeness of narrowly distributed taxa in conservation planning.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of distribution data for 1630 threatened plant taxa.
• Quantitative comparison of narrowly distributed and widespread taxa in identifying areas meeting conservation targets.
• Assessment of cost-efficiency in achieving conservation goals using different taxa types.

Main Results:

• Narrowly distributed taxa are significantly more informative than widespread taxa for identifying areas that efficiently meet conservation targets.
• The informativeness of narrowly distributed taxa for cost-efficient area identification varied based on the specific conservation target.
• Narrowly distributed taxa are informative due to their disproportionate capture of both taxon-rich and taxon-poor areas and higher taxon capture per record.

Conclusions:

• Prioritizing areas with numerous narrowly distributed taxa can enhance conservation planning, especially when resources for data updates are limited.
• Understanding taxon distribution patterns is key to optimizing biological atlas data for effective conservation strategies.