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Maximizing phylogenetic diversity in biodiversity conservation: Greedy solutions to the Noah's Ark Problem

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-17, 06:59 authored by Klaas HartmannKlaas Hartmann, Steel, M
The Noah's Ark Problem (NAP) is a comprehensive cost-effectiveness methodology for biodiversity conservation that was introduced by Weitzman (1998) and utilizes the phylogenetic tree containing the taxa of interest to assess biodiversity. Given a set of taxa, each of which has a particular survival probability that can be increased at some cost, the NAP seeks to allocate limited funds to conserving these taxa so that the future expected biodiversity is maximized. Finding optimal solutions using this framework is a computationally difficult problem to which a simple and efficient “greedy” algorithm has been proposed in the literature and applied to conservation problems. We show that, although algorithms of this type cannot produce optimal solutions for the general NAP, there are two restricted scenarios of the NAP for which a greedy algorithm is guaranteed to produce optimal solutions. The first scenario requires the taxa to have equal conservation cost; the second scenario requires an ultrametric tree. The NAP assumes a linear relationship between the funding allocated to conservation of a taxon and the increased survival probability of that taxon. This relationship is briefly investigated and one variation is suggested that can also be solved using a greedy algorithm.

History

Publication title

Systematic Biology

Volume

55

Issue

4

Pagination

644-651

ISSN

1063-5157

Department/School

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies

Publisher

Taylor & Francis Inc

Place of publication

325 Chestnut St, Suite 800, Philadelphia, USA, Pa, 19106

Rights statement

The definitive published version is available online at: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Terrestrial biodiversity

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