Assessing phylodiversity spatial patterns of Southern Ocean fauna for biodiversity conservation

CCAMLR has taken on an important role in the world oceans conservation planning and has agreed to develop a representative system of MPAs based on the best available science in the Southern Ocean. The RSMPA aims to protect ecosystem processes and biodiversity, and to promote research. Here we explore the usefulness of phylodiversity as a measure of biodiversity at the Southern Ocean scale to include historical depth in our future assessment of climate change impact on biodiversity. We show that existing and proposed MPAs will protect a significant proportion of phylogenetic diversity (PD) when implemented fully, but also that a significant proportion of PD would also fall outside RSMPA boundaries.