In a complex network study that I published in Science with Daniel Stouffer, Marta Sales-Pardo and Jordi Bascompte, we showed a first step towards uniting global conservation efforts. We can identify a species that is crucial to the diversity of a specific food web (ecosystem). This can tell us a lot about ecosystems all around the world. If a species is important in one system, others genetically similar to it in different systems tend to be important as well. Here are a couple of articles that appeared in press about it.
Read about it on Phys.org (which includes an interview with me)
Read about it on Science Daily
Read about it on Geographical Magazine