Blind Spots in Traditional Approaches to Conservation Prioritization in a Climate Change Context

ABSTRACT Aim Climate change affects biodiversity faster than conservation assessments can be conducted. This issue calls for approaches that support decisions on conservation prioritization, such as species phylogenetic relationships and diversity and endemism metrics. However, these traditional approaches often neglect some important aspects, limiting their effectiveness. We used desiccation‐tolerant vascular plants (DT plants) to investigate the effectiveness of such approaches to prioritize species and areas for conservation under climate change. Location Global. Methods For that, we used climate data to model the distribution of all DT plants recognized to date to evaluate if species phylogenetic relationships can depict similarities in species sensitivity and exposure to climate change, and to evaluate if centres of diversity and endemism for DT plants can correspond to regions prone to climate change. Results We found that the species phylogenetic relationships weakly explain species sensitivity to climate change, although it can, to some extent, describe trends in species exposure to climate change. We also found that centres of diversity and endemism for DT plants are not necessarily the most prone ones to climate change. Main Conclusions We suggest a limited effectiveness of phylogenetic relationships and of diversity and endemism metrics for conservation prioritization, once these approaches might overlook vulnerable species and regions exposed to climate change. We discuss that a better understanding of the mechanisms of diversity would help to identify situations in which closely related species show lower ecological differences than distantly related species, when phylogenetic relationships are a more relevant approach in a conservation context. We also suggest that more efficient conservation strategies in centres of diversity and endemism of DT plants should focus on species sensitivity and adaptive capacity to climate change, rather than the magnitude of climate change.