Distribution of phylogenetic diversity under random extinction

Phylogenetic diversity is a measure for describing how much of an evolutionary tree is spanned by a subset of species. If one applies this to the (unknown) subset of current species that will still be present at some future time, then this 'future phylogenetic diversity' provides a measure of the impact of various extinction scenarios in biodiversity conservation. We have studied the distribution of future phylogenetic diversity under a simple model of extinction (a generalized 'field of bullets' model). In this talk, I present our finding that the distribution of future phylogenetic diversity converges to a normal distribution as the number of species grows. This result is significant for biodiversity conservation.