Dataset Information

Absence of phylogenetic signal in the niche structure of meadow plant communities.

ABSTRACT: A significant proportion of the global diversity of flowering plants has evolved in recent geological time, probably through adaptive radiation into new niches. However, rapid evolution is at odds with recent research which has suggested that plant ecological traits, including the beta- (or habitat) niche, evolve only slowly. We have quantified traits that determine within-habitat alpha diversity (alpha niches) in two communities in which species segregate on hydrological gradients. Molecular phylogenetic analysis of these data shows practically no evidence of a correlation between the ecological and evolutionary distances separating species, indicating that hydrological alpha niches are evolutionarily labile. We propose that contrasting patterns of evolutionary conservatism for alpha- and beta-niches is a general phenomenon necessitated by the hierarchical filtering of species during community assembly. This determines that species must have similar beta niches in order to occupy the same habitat, but different alpha niches in order to coexist.

SUBMITTER: Silvertown J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1560004 | biostudies-literature | 2006 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Absence of phylogenetic signal in the niche structure of meadow plant communities.

Silvertown Jonathan J McConway Kevin K Gowing David D Dodd Mike M Fay Michael F MF Joseph Jeffrey A JA Dolphin Konrad K

Proceedings. Biological sciences 20060101 1582

A significant proportion of the global diversity of flowering plants has evolved in recent geological time, probably through adaptive radiation into new niches. However, rapid evolution is at odds with recent research which has suggested that plant ecological traits, including the beta- (or habitat) niche, evolve only slowly. We have quantified traits that determine within-habitat alpha diversity (alpha niches) in two communities in which species segregate on hydrological gradients. Molecular ph ...[more]

PMID: 16519232

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Project description:In the absence of independent observational data, ecologists and paleoecologists use proxies for the Eltonian niches of species (i.e., the resource or dietary axes of the niche). Some dietary proxies exploit the fact that mammalian teeth experience wear during mastication, due to both tooth-on-tooth and food-on-tooth interactions. The distribution and types of wear detectible at micro- and macroscales are highly correlated with the resource preferences of individuals and, in turn, species. Because methods that quantify the distribution of tooth wear (i.e., analytical tooth wear methods) do so by direct observation of facets and marks on the teeth of individual animals, dietary inferences derived from them are thought to be independent of the clade to which individuals belong. However, an assumption of clade or phylogenetic independence when making species-level dietary inferences may be misleading if phylogenetic niche conservatism is widespread among mammals. Herein, we test for phylogenetic signal in data from numerous analytical tooth wear studies, incorporating macrowear (i.e., mesowear) and microwear (i.e., low-magnification microwear and dental microwear texture analysis). Using two measures of phylogenetic signal, heritability (H2) and Pagel's ?, we find that analytical tooth wear data are not independent of phylogeny and failing to account for such nonindependence leads to overestimation of discriminability among species with different dietary preferences. We suggest that morphological traits inherited from ancestral clades (e.g., tooth shape) influence the ways in which the teeth wear during mastication and constrain the foods individuals of a species can effectively exploit. We do not suggest that tooth wear is simply phylogeny in disguise; the tooth wear of individuals and species likely varies within some range that is set by morphological constraints. We therefore recommend the use of phylogenetic comparative methods in studies of mammalian tooth wear, whenever possible.

Dataset Information

Absence of phylogenetic signal in the niche structure of meadow plant communities.

Publications

Absence of phylogenetic signal in the niche structure of meadow plant communities.

Similar Datasets

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