Applying evolutionary theory to biodiversity studies

我们希望提供理论基础和实践指导，帮助我们在面对即将到来的灭绝时，如何最好地保存进化历史。每当一个物种灭绝时，它所包含的相互作用的基因复合体就会随之消亡。有些物种有很多近亲，因此在这段历史中有很多冗余（想想不同的老鼠物种），而其他物种在生命之树上是孤立的，因此是这些遗传信息的唯一传递者（海象和山狸是加拿大的主要例子）。我们可以认为这些孤独的物种特别“独特”，而独特性是衡量生物多样性要素的众多方式之一。该提案提出了一系列需要回答的问题：衡量进化独特性的最可靠、最灵活、最直接的方法是什么？不同的物种在哪些方面是不同的，它们在哪些方面是不同的？哪些物种在加拿大最有特色？最后，也是最重要的一点是，加拿大人目前是如何赋予单个物种价值的？所有这些问题的答案应该有助于我们欣赏和保护我们的生物遗产。

We would like to offer theoretical underpining and practical guidance for how we might best preserve evolutionary history in the face of imminent extinction. Every time a species goes extinct, the interacting complex of genes that it embodies dies with it. Some species have many close relatives, and so there is a lot of redundancy in this history (think of different mice species), while others are isolated on the Tree of Life and so are the sole conveyers of this genetic information (the Walrus and mountain beavers are prime Canadian examples). We can think of these lonely species as being particularly 'distinctive' and distinctiveness as one of many ways to value the elements of biodiversity. The proposal sets out a series of questions that need to be answered: what are the most robust, flexible and straightforward ways to measure evolutionary distinctiveness? In what ways are distinctive species expected to be different, and in what ways are they different? Which species are the most distinctive in Canada? Finally, and importantly, how do Canadians currently give value to individual species? Answers to all these questions should help us appreciate and safeguard our biological heritage.