Biosystematics and conservation biology: critical scientific disciplines for the management of insect biological diversity

Abstract

Biosystematics and conservation biology are critical scientific disciplines that underpin the management of biological diversity. This is because biosystematics provides two basic elements that are fundamental to conservation management: the circumscription of species and the spatial distribution of species. These elements in turn allow conservation biologists to determine the components of biodiversity, such as local species richness (α-diversity), composition and community structure, patterns of spatial turnover and heterogeneity (β-diversity), levels of endemism, and location of 'biodiversity hotspots'. This information ultimately provides a framework for systematic conservation planning for the management of biological diversity and natural resources. In this review, drawing on examples of Australian diurnal Lepidoptera (butterflies and day-flying moths), we discuss three areas of conservation biology that are crucial for insect biodiversity conservation: (1) inventory and estimation of faunal richness; (2) monitoring for conservation management and the selection and use of bioindicators; and (3) assessment of conservation status and recovery of threatened species. We then explore the capacity of biosystematics to complement and enhance these programmes. Major challenges for biosystematics are to catalogue and map the Earth's known species, to discover and describe new or as-yet-unknown species, to reconstruct the evolutionary history or tree of life and to incorporate phylogenetic diversity (taxonomic distinctiveness) as a component of biodiversity into conservation planning and practical nature conservation. The first two tasks, which need to be completed relatively urgently in an era of biodiversity crisis and a limited and declining pool of taxonomic expertise, are required in order to optimise conservation effort of the world's biodiversity. It is recommended that to overcome the taxonomic impediment for insect conservation taxonomic attention should focus on a limited set of 'priority' taxa, and the rate at which new species are discovered and described needs to be accelerated (by at least an order of magnitude). An agenda for future research in biosystematics and conservation biology is proposed as a guideline for biodiversity conservation for Australian entomology.