In the face of inevitable future losses to biodiversity, ranking species by conservation priority seems more than prudent. Setting conservation priorities within species (i.e., at the population level) may be critical as species ranges become fragmented and connectivity declines. However, existing approaches to prioritization (e.g., scoring organisms by their expected genetic contribution) are based on phylogenetic trees, which may be poor representations of differentiation below the species level. In this paper we extend evolutionary isolation indices used in conservation planning from phylogenetic trees to phylogenetic networks. Such networks better represent population differentiation, and our extension allows populations to be ranked in order of their expected contribution to the set. We illustrate the approach using data from two imperiled species: the spotted owl Strix occidentalis in North America and the mountain pygmy-possum Burramys parvus in Australia. Using previously published mitochondrial and microsatellite data, we construct phylogenetic networks and score each population by its relative genetic distinctiveness. In both cases, our phylogenetic networks capture the geographic structure of each species: geographically peripheral populations harbor less-redundant genetic information, increasing their conservation rankings. We note that our approach can be used with all conservation-relevant distances (e.g., those based on whole-genome, ecological, or adaptive variation) and suggest it be added to the assortment of tools available to wildlife managers for allocating effort among threatened populations.

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Climate change is altering fire regimes. As fire regimes change, it is important to understand how mammals respond to these altered post-fire landscapes. Because fires vary in size, severity and landscape context, it is important to know the experimental designs and response variables used to address post-fire responses of mammals. We analysed 48 papers published from 1988 to 2015 that examined responses of small mammals to natural or prescribed fire in North American conifer forests. These papers used different experimental contrasts (e.g. burned vs unburned sites, time series, within-fire heterogeneity). Most studies (89.6%) presented species richness or index-derived abundances of common species as their response variable(s). Many studies did not fully describe the fires being examined; these omissions make it more difficult to interpret and compare results among studies. The limited scope of inference presented by the papers in this review leads us to recommend a minimal set of information that should be presented about each fire studied. We conclude by outlining how different experimental designs and response variables can be used for effective inference. We highlight major pathways forward for examining responses of small forest mammals to the important changes in fire regime that are occurring.