Correspondence

This study uses phylogeny-based measures of evolutionary potential (phyloge-netic diversity and community structure) to evaluate the evolutionary value of vascular plant genera endemic to Chile. Endemicity is regarded as a very impor-tant consideration for conservation purposes. Taxa that are endemic to a single country are valuable conservation targets, as their protection depends upon a single government policy. This is especially relevant in developing countries in which conservation is not always a high resource allocation priority. Phylogeny-based measures of evolutionary potential such as phylogenetic diversity (PD) have been regarded as meaningful measures of the “value ” of taxa and ecosys-tems, as they are able to account for the attributes that could allow taxa to recover from environmental changes. Chile is an area of remarkable endemism, harboring a flora that shows the highest number of endemic genera in South America. We studied PD and community structure of this flora using a previ-ously available supertree at the genus level, to which we added DNA sequence