Does higher taxon diversity reflect richness of conservation interest species?

A critical issue in conservation biology is the establishment of a strong relationship between species richness and a surrogate index. Such a relationship could provide the basis for the establishment of cost effective and easy to monitor methods for measuring biodiversity, providing an alternative for the prioritization of sites for conservation. We found that richness of species of conservation interest could reliably be predicted from the richness of higher order taxa, such as genus and family, in amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Furthermore, the networks of reserve sites selected based upon the richness of genera or families were as effective in including species diversity, as the ones selected based upon species richness.