Marine parks fail to protect coral evolutionary diversity

Most of the evolutionary diversity of corals and fish is not currently supported by the world’s network of marine protected areas (MPAs), according to a paper co-authored by Australian researchers in Nature Communications.

The researchers looked at 805 species of coral and 450 species of labrid fish and found that, although the world’s MPA network covers 5.9% of the total coral reef area, this network only encompasses 1.7% of the total known evolutionary history of corals, while only 17.6% of the evolutionary history of fish is protected.

This means that about 7,160 million years of the evolutionary history of corals and 3,586 million years of that of fish are not adequately protected by MPAs.

Although MPAs were originally established to conserve species diversity rather than evolutionary diversity, the authors argue that the latter is a crucial, often overlooked, component of biodiversity.

This is because more distantly related groups may perform unusual or complementary roles that are vital for a ecosystems function, whereas closely related species are more likely to perform similar or overlapping roles.