Abstract Cross-taxonomic surrogates are often used in conservation planning because inventorying large suites of taxa is either not feasible or too costly. However, cross-taxonomic surrogates are seldom tested rigorously using both correlational and representation-based approaches at the spatial scales at which conservation management occurs. Here, we evaluated the effectiveness of five ecologically contrasting taxa (birds, herpetofauna, wild bees, beetles, trees) as cross-taxonomic surrogates in native woodland patches within a heavily modified, farming and plantation-dominated landscape. We first compared species richness and compositional heterogeneity across taxa before testing for cross-taxonomic congruence using a correlative approach. We then quantified how well each taxon incidentally represented other taxa in their best patch sets, and the costs of doing so using a complementarity-based approach. We found significant pairwise associations between some taxa (birds, bees), but no single taxon was strongly correlated with all other taxa. Woodland patch sets prioritised for beetles represented other taxa best, followed by birds, but were the costliest and required the largest amount of woodland. This contrasted with patch sets prioritised for wild bees or herpetofauna, which achieved higher representation of other taxa at lower costs. Our study highlighted the influence of taxon-specific patterns of diversity and heterogeneity on how remnant vegetation patches should be prioritised for conservation, a consideration not immediately obvious in correlative analyses of surrogacy. Second, taxa that are not the most speciose (e.g. wild bees) can be efficient surrogates, achieving higher incidental representation for other taxa at lower costs. Thus, while species-rich taxa are ideal as surrogates for prioritising conservation, conservation planners should not overlook the potential of less speciose taxa such as bees, while considering the cost-effectiveness of surveying multiple different taxa.

中文翻译：

---

人类改造景观中生物多样性保护的跨分类替代物——多分类群方法

摘要 在保护规划中经常使用跨分类替代物，因为盘点大量分类群要么不可行，要么成本太高。然而，很少使用相关性和基于表征的方法在保护管理发生的空间尺度上对跨分类替代物进行严格测试。在这里，我们评估了五种生态对比鲜明的分类群（鸟类、爬行动物、野生蜜蜂、甲虫、树木）作为跨分类替代物在经过大量改造、以农业和种植园为主的景观中的原生林地斑块中的有效性。在使用相关方法测试跨分类一致性之前，我们首先比较了跨分类群的物种丰富度和组成异质性。然后我们量化了每个分类群在其最佳补丁集中偶然代表其他分类群的程度，以及使用基于互补性的方法这样做的成本。我们发现一些分类群（鸟类、蜜蜂）之间存在显着的成对关联，但没有一个分类群与所有其他分类群密切相关。优先用于甲虫的林地补丁集代表其他类群最好，其次是鸟类，但成本最高，需要的林地数量最多。这与优先用于野生蜜蜂或爬行动物的补丁集形成对比，后者以较低的成本实现了其他分类群的更高代表性。我们的研究强调了特定于分类群的多样性和异质性模式对如何优先保护剩余植被斑块的影响，这一考虑在代孕相关分析中并不明显。其次，不是最特殊的分类群（例如野生蜜蜂）可以是有效的替代品，以更低的成本为其他分类群实现更高的偶然代表性。因此，虽然物种丰富的分类群是优先保护的理想替代物，但保护规划者在考虑调查多个不同分类群的成本效益时不应忽视蜜蜂等物种较少的分类群的潜力。