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9 - The oldest rainforests in Africa: stability or resilience for survival and diversity?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2009

By
Jon C. Lovett ,
Rob Marchant ,
James Taplin  and
Wolfgang Küper
Edited by
Andrew Purvis ,
John L. Gittleman  and
Thomas Brooks
Jon C. Lovett
Affiliation:
Environment Department, University of York, York YO10 5DD, UK
Rob Marchant
Affiliation:
Department of Botany, Kruislaan 318, 1098 SM Amsterdam, The Netherlands Department of Botany, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland
James Taplin
Affiliation:
Environment Department, University of York, York YO10 5DD
Wolfgang Küper
Affiliation:
Botanical Institute, University of Bonn, Meckenheimer Allee 170, D-533115 Bonn, Germany
Andrew Purvis
Affiliation:
Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London
John L. Gittleman
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
Thomas Brooks
Affiliation:
Conservation International, Washington DC
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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Conservation priorities are often determined by superlatives. For example, they might be set by the presence of the biggest tree, the most species-rich place, or the oldest rainforest. But as well as having a ‘book of records’ approach to conservation, we should also be thinking about what these measures tell us about the ecology and phylogenetic history of the species we wish to conserve. This information can then help guide the design of effective conservation practices. We might ask whether the oldest rainforests, as determined by the presence of phylogenetic relicts, are there because they were in places that did not suffer change, in other words they were stable over ecological and evolutionary time, or whether they are there because the ecosystem is particularly resilient to change. The resilience could arise from several different reasons. The species themselves could be particularly tolerant of change, or the ecosystem as a whole could be resilient to change, or the place where the old rainforest occurs could be topographically diverse and its constituent species able to move locally when change occurs. The distinction is extremely important for conservation management. An old rainforest adapted to stability will not survive the types of change resulting from human interference, whereas one composed of ecologically tolerant species will. For rainforests there are two key reasons for thinking in terms of dynamic ecological and evolutionary processes rather than a static preservation approach.

Type
Chapter
Information
Phylogeny and Conservation , pp. 198 - 229
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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