Place prioritization for biodiversity reserve network design: a comparison of the SITES and ResNet software packages for coverage and efficiency

Abstract

The place prioritization problem in conservation biology is that of establishing a sequentially prioritized list of places on the basis of biodiversity content. Such a list can then be used to select reserve networks that are designed to be fully representative of the biodiversity of an area as efficiently as possible (for instance, with minimum area or cost). The usual goal is the representation of all chosen biodiversity surrogates up to or beyond a required target, or to the greatest available extent. The purpose of this paper is to compare the respective performances of two place prioritization software packages, SITES and ResNet, on four datasets (distributions of termite genera in Namibia, breeding bird species in the Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas, vertebrate species in Texas and flora and fauna species that are at risk in Québec), to determine their respective merits. The two software packages implement radically different algorithms: SITES is based on a simulated annealing procedure for finding (local) optima; ResNet uses an algorithm based on rarity and complementarity. This analysis indicates that the rarity-complementarity based algorithm of ResNet surpasses the simulated annealing approach of SITES with respect to time and completeness. SITES, however, contains other features that are useful in conservation planning. Ways in which the two packages can be used together effectively are suggested.

Selection of an endemic flora reserve network and its biogeographical significance in the Baetic ranges (Southern Spain)

“…The absolute agreement between the totally different approaches demonstrates the solidness of the final solution. These results also confirm the advantage of the combined use of different software packages, as Kelly et al (2002) reported.…”

“…Just as Kelly et al (2002) assessed and recommended the combined use of different software, our combined use of programmes based on different philosophies (heuristic and meta-heuristic ones) was demonstrated as a powerful tool.…”

“…We were able to elude this apparent drawback of the meta-heuristic procedures by stressing their summed solution. This solution was the means to establish the robustness of a proposal, to assess priorities of the same (Andelman et al, 1999) and compare it to the ResNet dataset (Kelly et al, 2002).…”

Priority areas for anuran conservation using biogeographical data: a comparison of greedy, rarity, and simulated annealing algorithms to define reserve networks in Cerrado

“…It would be difficult to choose among them, although a few guidelines for doing so could be established. The shorter solution, obtained by simulated annealing (8 quadrats), is problematic since it omits three species, one of them endemic to the biome, thus supporting Kelley et al (2002) who recently found that heuristic, sequential algorithms in some instances may be advantageous in relation to optimized global solutions. In addition, sequential solutions may be preferable for practical applications since they result in a priority rank that is possibly useful in dealing with hotspots (such as cerrado) or with organisms, such as anurans, that are very sensitive to environmental changes.…”

“…In the three methods used, the purpose is to keep all species represented at least once in the network (the target). Following Kelley et al (2002), the three solutions were compared using Jaccard coefficients.…”