Our study suggests that preserving areas in the landscape supporting higher butterfly diversity only partially preserves those species of greater conservation concern, and that butterflies cannot be used as a reliable indicator of other priority taxa for conservation, such as carabid beetles.
A further problem is that research has ignored taxa with wide-scale evolutionary histories, including adaptation within a large range of key ecoregions, in favour of specialists, which are often of greater conservation concern and serve as examples of singular threatened ecoregions.
For wildlife managers, this means that the populations of greatest conservation concern may be at the highest risk of being misidentified by D-loop haplotyping.
○ These findings are broadly relevant to wildlife management, since our study shows that populations of greatest conservation concern (those showing the least genetic divergence) are at the greatest risk of being misidentified by D-loop genotyping.
In our current analysis, we sequenced 40 complete mitochondrial genomes from fisher samples throughout their geographic range in North America, with specific emphasis on the populations of greatest conservation concern (Rocky Mountains and California; Table 1).
Genealogical inferences based on mitochondrial D-loop variation are in conflict with the remainder of the mitogenome, and D-loop sequences underestimate the distinctiveness of the populations of greatest conservation concern due to the accumulation of independent, recurrent mutations.
First, inferred genealogical reconstructions based on the fisher D-loop region contradict inferences based on the entire mitogenome to the point that the populations of greatest conservation concern cannot be accurately resolved.
