TAXONOMY, COMPOSITIONAL BIODIVERSITY AND FUNCTIONAL BIODIVERSITY OF FYNBOS

There are several approaches to weighting species in order to establis h a calculus of biodiversity. Ecologists are usually interested in fun ctional biodiversity, whereas systematists are more concerned with com positional biodiversity. However, these methods are all dependent on t he basic taxonomy, and especially on the delimitation of monophyletic tara. If the taxa are not all monophyletic, then the taxonomy will not be isomorphic with phylogeny, and can therefore not be expected to pr edict genetic diversity. It is generally assumed that phylogenetic div ersity predicts functional diversity. We performed a small test on a s ample of the flora of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa, and show a ver y close relationship between genetic diversity and functional diversit y. However, it is evident that in some aspects this simple approach wi ll fail to indicate interesting problems.