Christopher J. Humphries

Beyond opportunism: Key principles for systematic reserve selection.

The intention and practice of conservation reserve selection are different. A major reason for systems of reserves is to sustain biological diversity. This involves protecting examples of as many natural features, e.g. species, communities or environments, as possible. In reality, however, new reserves have rarely been dedicated for their representation of features. Furthermore, the opportunism that has characterized the development of reserve systems can actually jeopardize the representation of all features in reserves through the inefficient allocation of limited resources. More systematic approaches are essential if reserves are to play their role in protecting biodiversity. Some basic principles for conservation planning are emerging from recent systematic procedures for reserve selection. These principles will help to link intention and practice.

Simultaneous parsimony jackknife analysis of 2538 rbcL DNA sequences reveals support for major clades of green plants, land plants, seed plants and flowering plants

The ever-larger data matrices resulting from continuing improvements in DNA sequencing techniques require faster and more efficient methods of phylogenetic analysis. Here we explore a promising new method, parsimony jackknifing, by analyzing a matrix comprising 2538 sequences of the chloroplast generbcL. The sequences included cover a broad taxonomic range, from cyanobacteria to flowering plants. Several parsimony jackknife analyses were performed, both with and without branch-swapping and multiple random addition sequences: 1) including all positions; 2) including only first and second codon positions; 3) including only third positions; and 4) using only transversions. The best resolution was obtained using all positions. Removal of third positions or transitions led to massive loss of resolution, although using only transversions somewhat improved basal resolution. While branch-swapping improved both resolution and the support found for several groups, most of the groups could be recovered by faster simple analyses. Designed to eliminate groups poorly supported by the data, parsimony jackknifing recognizes 1400 groups on the basis of allrbcL positions. These include major taxa such as green plants, land plants, flowering plants, monocots and eudicots. We include appendices of supported angiosperm families, as well as larger groups.

It's time to work together and stop duplicating conservation efforts ...

We strongly support initiatives to produce clear, efficient and practical goals for conservation to guide biodiversity planners and decision-makers in governments, agencies, conventions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). However, as things stand there is only limited consensus on global conservation priorities at international level. We believe that the time is now right for scientists and practitioners to work together to develop a commonly adopted blueprint for action.

Taxonomic Diversity of Vascular Plants in the European Alpine Areas

Using a relatively broad species concept, Flora Europaea describes about 11,500 native species (Tutin et al.1964, 1968-1980). The richest areas are around the Alps, Pyrenees and the Balkan Peninsula, where altitudinal zonation results in diverse habitats with many different species or subspecies within small areas (Ozenda 1983; Lahti and Lampinen 1999;Williams et al. 2000). Although there have been previous attempts to understand the relationships and hence the history of the mountain systems in Europe, a comprehensive analysis by comparing mountain ranges across Europe is difficult. The distribution data are compiled in various local floras that use administrative or political boundaries rather than natural biogeographical divisions. Moreover, workers at different times, even in similar areas, have used different species concepts, thus making comparisons difficult. As a new initiative, we examine here the richness and distribution of European alpine species using data from the first 11 volumes of Atlas Florae Europaeae (AFE). AFE (Jalas et al.1996) provides individual maps for more than 3000 vascular plant taxa from Lycopodiaceae to Brassicaceae, covering about 20% of all taxa treated in the five volumes of Flora Europaea. What makes this particular analysis possible is that these data have been digitised recently, enabling the use of the necessary diversity measures and area-selection analyses of alpine taxa using the WORLDMAP software (Humphries et al. 1999;Lahti and Lampinen 1999; Williams et al.2000).

Sequence of a small subunit rRNA gene of Schistosoma mansoni and its use in phylogenetic analysis

The complete sequence of a small ribosomal RNA gene of Schistosoma mansoni contained within plasmids pSM389 and pSM889 is presented. It was found to be 1992 bp in length, larger than that of most eukaryotes. Extra nucleotides occur in regions known to be variable (V4 and V7). The predicted secondary structure of the nucleotides 660-853 revealed additional helices which have been designated E21-1A and E21-1B. The other region to differ from higher eukaryotes lies between nucleotides 1457 and 1569. Secondary structure prediction demonstrated that a single extended helix may be formed from this part of the schistosome small subunit rRNA sequence. Nucleotides that could be unambiguously aligned with those of 12 other eukaryotes were used to estimate phylogenetic relationships. The consensus tree obtained by Maximum Parsimony analysis showed the schistosome as a sister taxon to the flatworm Dugesia tigrina.

IS FARRIS OPTIMIZATION PERFECT?: THREE-TAXON STATEMENTS AND MULTIPLE BRANCHING

Abstract — The three‐taxon approach to phylogenetic analysis separates the universe of cladograms into a larger number of classes of solutions showing decreasing degrees of fit to data than does conventional Farris optimization. The three‐taxon approach applies to character analysis Nelson and Platnicks interpretation 2 of multiple branching in cladograms.

Component Coding, Three-Item Coding, and Consensus Methods

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