Genetic consequences of ecological reserve design guidelines: An empirical investigation

We assessed the geneticdiversity consequences of applying ecologicalreserve design guidelines to four federally-listedglobally-rare plant species. Consequences weremeasured using two metrics: proportion of allalleles and of common alleles included inreserves. Common alleles were defined as those alleleshaving a frequency of 0.05 in at least onepopulation. Four conservation professionalsapplied ecological reserve guidelines to choosespecific populations of each species forinclusion in reserves of size 1 to N – 1, whereN is the total number of populations of each species.Information regarding genetic diversity was notused in selecting populations. The resulting reservedesigns were compared to random designs, andthe agreement among experts was assessed usingKendall's coefficient of concordance.Application of ecological reserve design guidelines provedmostly ineffective in capturing more geneticdiversity than is captured selectingpopulations randomly. Meeting establishedtargets for genetic diversity, such as one advocated by theCenter for Plant Conservation, required largernumbers of populations than are suggested to besufficient. Relative performance of expertdesigns differed among species and wasdependent on whether the proportion of allalleles or of common alleles was used as a measure ofdiversity. Furthermore there was no significantconcordance among experts in order in whichpopulations were incorporated into reserves asexperts differed in priority they placed onindividual guidelines.