JAPANESE JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY

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Systematic conservation planning (SCP) provides a decision-support framework for biodiversity conservation for multi-stakeholder deliberation. The core concept for designing protected area (PA) networks is the CAR principle, which comprises Comprehensiveness, Adequacy, and Representativeness. This is the basis of conservation planning, involving the identification of potential biodiversity patterns within a PA network as sampled areas. Priority areas for implementing conservation targets are identified in a spatially explicit manner, based on site-selection algorithms using biodiversity features and socioeconomic cost layers. Site-selection algorithms have roots in the concept of complementarity, which is related to ecological/evolutionary distinctiveness and the spatial turnover of biodiversity features among sites. Complementarity is a conceptual attribute of site-selection algorithms used to explore the minimum-set problem. Irreplaceability constitutes an index of conservation priority, and it is informative to associate the irreplaceability score with threat/vulnerability levels among sites when using a reactive conservation approach. Spatial prioritization of the Zonation algorithm is a promising tool for defining conservation targets recursively, and enables us to prioritize ranking for minimizing biodiversity loss under socioeconomic constraints. The concept of persistence is an important one for the future development of SCP, which currently assumes static biodiversity patterns. Incorporating macroecological patterns and underlying processes into the CAR principle is critical for maintaining biogeographical potential in conservation planning.

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Evidence is accumulating that plant–herbivore interactions vary spatiotemporally at scales of several decades and hundreds of kilometers and that this drives the evolution of plant defense within a species. Here, we present a general review of recent examples with the aim of outlining an empirical framework for understanding the evolutionary dynamics of anti-herbivore defenses. First, we review the mechanisms shaping and maintaining variation in plant defense by focusing on two spatial scales, i.e., within and among populations. We review how biotic and abiotic factors cause divergent selection among populations and thereby shape geographic variation in plant defense. Within a plant population, we focus on how an apparent herbivore-mediated interaction maintains genetic variation in anti-herbivore defense. Then, we outline intraspecific evolutionary processes and patterns (i.e., microevolution) in plant defense by connecting the two spatial scales in terms of apparent competition. We also discuss whether major hypotheses explaining interspecific patterns of plant defense can explain microevolution and whether microevolution in plant defense links to interspecific variation via speciation. These recent findings suggest that microevolution in plant defense contributes to global and phylogenetic patterns (macroevolution) in plant defense.

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