A new method for selection of umbrella species for conservation planning

Umbrella species, species whose protection serves to protect many cooccurri ng species, have been proposed as a shortcut for conservation planning. Pot ential criteria for selection of umbrella species include rarity, sensitivi ty to human disturbance, and mean percentage of co-occurring species. Using butterflies in montane canyons in the Great Basin (USA) as a case study, w e examined correlations among those three selection methods. We also develo ped a new index that specifically ranks species according to their potentia l to serve as umbrellas for their taxonomic group. Different methods for pr ioritizing species generally produced divergent rankings. Although rare but terflies tended to co-occur with more species than widespread butterflies, rare species may be poor umbrellas because their distributions are too high ly restricted and often cannot be influenced by managers. Umbrella species are useful in meeting certain conservation challenges, particularly priorit ization of habitat remnants for conservation or other land uses. Our work d emonstrates that a subset of a fauna may serve as an effective umbrella for a larger ecological community, and therefore play an important role in con temporary management planning.