Conservation of Afrotropical antelopes: consequences and efficiency of using different site selection methods and diversity criteria

The consequences of different measures of biotic diversity for the selection of priority sites for conservation were investigated using a dataset on Afrotropical antelopes. Site networks were selected using species richness, taxonomic diversity and restricted-range diversity as selection criteria. Restricted-range diversity was the most efficient criterion at representing all the species in the dataset. However when only a few sites could be conserved (insufficient to include all species) restricted-range diversity was relatively poor at representing absolute numbers of species and also taxonomic diversity. Use of unweighted species richness rather than a taxonomically weighted score did not significantly reduce the amount of taxonomic diversity represented. As expected an iterative selection of sites was considerably more efficient at representing all aspects of diversity than selection of the top-scoring sites. However the efficiency of an iterative selection procedure was reduced when some areas were already part of the reserve network. Since none of the criteria for selecting reserves maximizes all aspects of biodiversity under all circumstances, it is necessary to be clear about the objectives of a reserve network when deciding on a method for site selection.