Biodiversity is ultimately the outcome of millions of years of evolution; however, due to increasing human domination of the Earth, biodiversity in its multiple dimensions is changing rapidly. Here, we present “phylogenetic completeness” (PC) as a concept and method for safeguarding Earth's evolutionary heritage by maintaining all branches of the tree of life. Using data for five major terrestrial clades, we performed a global evaluation of the PC approach and compared the results to an approach in which species are conserved or lost at random. We demonstrate that under PC, for a given number of species extinctions, it is possible to maximize the protection of evolutionary innovations in every clade. The PC approach is flexible, may be used to conduct a phylogenetic audit of biodiversity under different conservation scenarios, complements existing conservation efforts, and is linked to the post-2020 UN Convention on Biodiversity targets.

中文翻译：

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不遗余力：从系统发育完整性的角度追踪陆地生物多样性

生物多样性最终是数百万年进化的结果；然而，由于人类对地球的统治日益加强，生物多样性的多个层面正在迅速变化。在这里，我们提出“系统发育完整性”（PC）作为通过维护生命之树的所有分支来保护地球进化遗产的概念和方法。使用五个主要陆地进化枝的数据，我们对 PC 方法进行了全球评估，并将结果与​​物种随机保存或消失的方法进行了比较。我们证明，在 PC 下，对于给定数量的物种灭绝，可以最大限度地保护每个进化枝的进化创新。PC方法非常灵活，可用于在不同保护情景下对生物多样性进行系统发育审计，补充现有的保护工作，并与2020年后联合国生物多样性公约目标相联系。