It is often claimed that conserving evolutionary history is more efficient than species‐based approaches for capturing the attributes of biodiversity that benefit people. This claim underpins academic analyses and recommendations about the distribution and prioritization of species and areas for conservation, but evolutionary history is rarely considered in practical conservation activities. One impediment to implementation is that arguments related to the human‐centric benefits of evolutionary history are often vague and the underlying mechanisms poorly explored. Herein we identify the arguments linking the prioritization of evolutionary history with benefits to people, and for each we explicate the purported mechanism, and evaluate its theoretical and empirical support. We find that, even after 25 years of academic research, the strength of evidence linking evolutionary history to human benefits is still fragile.

中文翻译：

---

评估保存进化史的效用

人们经常声称，在捕捉有益于人类的生物多样性属性方面，保护进化历史比基于物种的方法更有效。这一主张支持了关于物种和保护区的分布和优先排序的学术分析和建议，但在实际保护活动中很少考虑进化历史。实施的一个障碍是，与进化史的以人为中心的好处相关的论点通常含糊不清，并且对潜在机制的探索不足。在此，我们确定了将进化历史的优先级与人类利益联系起来的论点，并为每个论点解释了所谓的机制，并评估了其理论和经验支持。我们发现，即使经过 25 年的学术研究，