Maximizing Phylogenetic Diversity in Biodiversity Conservation: Greedy Solutions to the Noah's Ark Problem

摘要: The Noah's Ark Problem (NAP) is a comprehensive cost-effectiveness methodology for biodiversity conservation that was introduced by Weitzman (1998) and utilizes the phylogenetic tree containing taxa of interest to assess biodiversity. Given set taxa, each which has particular survival probability can be increased at some cost, NAP seeks allocate limited funds conserving these so future expected maximized. Finding optimal solutions using this framework computationally difficult problem simple efficient "greedy" algorithm been proposed in literature applied problems. We show that, although algorithms type cannot produce general NAP, there are two restricted scenarios greedy guaranteed solutions. first scenario requires have equal cost; second an ultrametric tree. assumes linear relationship between funding allocated taxon taxon. This briefly investigated one variation suggested also solved algorithm.