What if saving one animal species from extinction at a time isn’t the most effective approach? Michael Belitz, a Michigan State University postdoctoral researcher in the Zipkin Quantitative Ecology Lab, asked himself that question during his graduate work protecting a single butterfly species.

As he studied species-level conservation, he found himself thinking about how multiple species interact and how they responded to warming temperatures, extreme weather and urbanization. He wondered if he might find more success protecting multiple species in a habitat instead of focusing on just one. 

Now, Belitz has coined a term for this work: assemblage-level conservation. In a newly published perspective article in Nature Reviews Biodiversity, Belitz and his colleagues advocate for the conscious protection of multiple species at the same time. They argue that conservation targeting groups of related species is an effective way to quantify, predict and manage multiple species. The time is right for a perspective shift, they argue, not only by researchers, but also by land managers, policymakers and conservationists.