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This chapter explores the following question: How can our knowledge of global biodiversity patterns and our understanding of underlying processes and drivers help us to apprehend, project, and reverse the trajectory of large-scale biodiversity loss? It examines global richness patterns and biodiversity hotspots on land and in the sea together. It looks at these patterns through two different lenses: (1) total species richness, and (2) relative richness across taxa. It argues that biodiversity patterns are not a static feature. In recent decades and certainly throughout Earth's history, the global magnitude and distribution of biodiversity has been dynamically changing in response to various environmental drivers, many of which are now affected by human activities. This means that the future of biodiversity is in our own hands, and future trajectories will largely depend on how we choose to constrain or manage the cumulative impacts that arise from our actions.

Mediterranean-type climate (MTC) regions have long been of interest to scientists and they formed the basis for many early ecological studies. This has included comparisons of the vegetation within these regions (mediterranean-type vegetation) as well as other functional, climatic, and historical studies and comparisons. Comparing MTC regions and the species that occur within them has been used to test the evolutionary convergence hypothesis. Continuing scientific interest in MTC regions is linked to their unusually high levels of species richness and biodiversity. These regions have the highest species richness outside of the tropics, particularly in vascular plant diversity, as well as high levels of endemism. International research activities and meetings have provided the opportunity for scholars to collaborate across MTC regions and have fostered an active comparative research environment from the 1960s to the present.

This chapter explains how phylogenetic information can be used to make better conservation decisions. Evidence shows that human-caused climate change is likely to be the dominant cause of extinction in the near future. Phylogeny can provide a powerful tool for aiding decision making in species conservation. The chapter first considers the importance of preserving evolutionary history by focusing on the tree of life, the phylogenetic tree connecting all living organisms that provides a powerful metaphor for conservation biology. It then examines phylogenetically based metrics for quantifying evolutionary history, including phylogenetic diversity for evaluating sites and evolutionary distinctiveness for comparing species. It also discusses the integration of evolutionary history with extinction probabilities for conservation prioritization using relative extinction risk to weight evolutionary distinctiveness, or EDGE (evolutionarily distinct and globally endangered). Finally, it describes how to prioritize biodiversity hotspots of evolutionary distinctiveness and how to apply metrics to conservation prioritization.