Berkeley Scientific Journal

Accurately and sufficiently quantifying biodiversity is integral for conservation. Traditional metrics for measuring biodiversity, species richness (SR) and weighted endemism (WE), do not take into account the evolutionary history of organisms. Phylogenetic diversity (PD) addresses the shortcomings of SR by quantifying the evolutionary connections among the species present in an area. Phylogenetic endemism (PE) addresses the shortcomings of WE and represents the ranges of the branches of the evolutionary tree connecting the species in an area. Australia, with its advanced digitization of spatial reference data is the best model system for quantitative studies of biodiversity at present. I created a phylogeny for the 39 indigenous Australian conifer species using matK and rbcL sequences from GenBank and sequencing the 4 species for which there were no existing data. I used spatial data from Australia’s Virtual Herbarium. More precise estimates of biodiversity can be used by conservation policy-makers.