Linking diversity to biological processes is central for developing informed and effective conservation decisions. Unfortunately, observable patterns provide only a proportion of the information necessary for fully understanding the mechanisms and processes acting on a particular population or community. We suggest conservation managers use the often overlooked information relative to species absences and pay particular attention to dark diversity (i.e., a set of species that are absent from a site but that could disperse to and establish there, in other words, the absent portion of a habitat-specific species pool). Together with existing ecological metrics, concepts, and conservation tools, dark diversity can be used to complement and further develop conservation prioritization and management decisions through an understanding of biodiversity relativized by its potential (i.e., its species pool). Furthermore, through a detailed understanding of the population, community, and functional dark diversity, the restoration potential of degraded habitats can be more rigorously assessed and so to the likelihood of successful species invasions. We suggest the application of the dark diversity concept is currently an underappreciated source of information that is valuable for conservation applications ranging from macroscale conservation prioritization to more locally scaled restoration ecology and the management of invasive species.

Department of Bioscience Ecoinformatics and Biodiversity Ny Munkegade 116 DK 8000 Aarhus C Denmark

Department of Botany Faculty of Science University of South Bohemia CZ 370 05 České Budějovice Czech Republic

Department of Environmental Research University of Oxford Oxford OX1 3PS U K

Department of Soil Science Faculty of Natural Science Comenius University SK 842 15 Bratislava Slovak Republic

Institute of Botany Czech Academy of Sciences Dukelská 135 379 82 Třeboň Czech Republic

Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences University of Tartu Lai 40 Tartu 51005 Estonia

References provided by Crossref.org

Global impoverishment of natural vegetation revealed by dark diversity

Large-scale dark diversity estimates: new perspectives with combined methods

Measuring size and composition of species pools: a comparison of dark diversity estimates