Craig Moritz

Craig Moritz

Abstract

Units in Conservation Genetics: What Is Real; What Is Useful?

There is continuing debate among geneticists and systematists over how best to represent biological diversity at or around the species level for the purpose of conservation assessment. One source of disagreement relates to long-standing debates over concepts and criteria for recognizing species. Another is how best to identify and manage genetic diversity within taxa. Throughout there is confusion over goals and, often, superficial application of criteria, rather than careful consideration of goals and appropriate strategies based on our knowledge of process for the system in question. In the context of a goal to preserve evolutionary processes, I suggest that we should separate genetic diversity arising from adaptive vs. vicariant processes and develop different strategies to deal with each of these. Whatever approach we adopt to recognise species or intraspecific units, we should recognize the dangers inherent in the sometimes necessary imposing of thresholds or boundaries on a genealogical continuum of evolutionary divergence.

Biography

Craig Moritz is director of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and professor in the Department of Integrative Biology, and Virginia G. and Robert E. Gill Chair in Natural History at the University of California, Berkeley. He is an evolutionary biologist with interests spanning historical biogeography, speciation, molecular ecology and systematics, as well as application of concepts from these fields to conservation. Major studies over the past 20 or so years have included analyses of chromosomal speciation in gecko lizards, evolutionary origins and consequences of parthenogenesis in reptiles, historical biography of a rainforest fauna, and conservation genetics of a variety of organisms. He recently moved from the University of Queensland to UC Berkeley.

Relevant Publications

Moritz, C. 1994. Defining "Evolutionarily Significant Units" for conservation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 9:373-375

Zhu, D., S. Degnan and C. Moritz. 1998. Evolutionary distinctiveness and status of the endangered Lake Eacham rainbowfish (Melanotaenia eachamensis). Conservation Biology 12:80-93.

Moritz, C. 1999. Conservation units and translocations: strategies for conserving evolutionary processes. Hereditas, 130:217-228

Moritz, C., J.L. Patton, C.J. Schneider, and T.B. Smith. 2000. Diversification of rainforest faunas: An integrated molecular approach. Ann. Rev. Ecol. Syst. 31:533-563 t.

<<Back to Presenters page