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Conservation of protists: is it needed at all?

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Abstract

Protists have scarcely been considered in traditional perspectives and strategies in environmental management and biodiversity conservation. This is a remarkable omission given that these tiny organisms are highly diverse, and have performed as key ecological players in evolutionary theatres for over a billion years of Earth history. Protists hold key roles in nearly all ecosystems, notably as participants in fluxes of energy and matter through foodwebs that centre on their predation on microbes. In spite of this, they have been largely ignored in conservation issues due to a widespread, naive belief that protists are ubiquitous and cosmopolitanously distributed. Nevertheless, recent research shows that many protists have markedly restricted distributions. These range from palaeoendemics (Gondwanan-Laurasian distribution) to local endemics. Our ignorance about the ultimate and proximate causes of such acute disparities in scale-dependent distributions of protists can be flagged as a singular reason to preserve these more cryptic participants in ecological and evolutionary dynamics. This argument is disturbing when one considers anthropogenic modifications of landscapes and the very poorly understood roles of protists in ecological processes in soils, not least in agroecolandscapes and hydrological systems. Major concerns include host specific symbiotic, symphoric and parasitic species which become extinct, unseen and largely unknown, alongside their metazoan hosts; change or loss of habitats; massive change or loss of type localities; and losses of unique genetic resources and evolutionary potential. These concerns are illustrated by examples to argue that conservation of protists should be integral to any strategy that traditionally targets vascular plants and animals. The ongoing decline in research capacity to inventory and classify protist diversity exemplifies a most acute symptom of the failures, at local, national and international levels, to support scientific responses to the biodiversity crisis. Responsible responses to these severe problems need to centre on the revival of natural history as the core discipline in biology.

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Acknowledgements

Supported by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF, P-15017 and P-19699-B17) and by the King Saud University, Saudi Arabia. Cotterill gratefully thanks essential support for interdisciplinary research from the Claude Leon Foundation, Cape Town, and a Biodiversity Leadership Award from the Bay Foundation, and the Josephine Bay Paul and C. Michael Paul Foundations, New York City. This is AEON Contribution No 0030. The technical assistance of Mag. Gudrun Fuss is gratefully acknowledged.

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  1. AEON – African Earth Observatory Network, Departments of Geological Sciences, and Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa

    F. P. D. Cotterill

  2. Zoology Department, King Saud University, P.O. Box 2455, Riyadh, 11451, Saudi Arabia

    Khaled Al-Rasheid

  3. FB Organismische Biologie, Universität Salzburg, Hellbrunnerstrasse 34, 5020, Salzburg, Austria

    Wilhelm Foissner

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  1. F. P. D. Cotterill
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Correspondence to Wilhelm Foissner.

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F. P. D. Cotterill: Formerly Principal Curator of Vertebrates, Natural History Museum of Zimbabwe, P.O. Box 240, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe

Special Issue: Protist diversity and geographic distribution. Guest editor: W. Foissner

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Cotterill, F.P.D., Al-Rasheid, K. & Foissner, W. Conservation of protists: is it needed at all?. Biodivers Conserv 17, 427–443 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-007-9261-8

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