Dataset Information

The Janus of macrophysiology: stronger effects of evolutionary history, but weaker effects of climate on upper thermal limits are reversed for lower thermal limits in ants.

ABSTRACT: Species may exhibit similar traits via different mechanisms: environmental filtering and local adaptation (geography) and shared evolutionary history (phylogeny) can each contribute to the resemblance of traits among species. Parsing trait variation into geographic and phylogenetic sources is important, as each suggests different constraints on trait evolution. Here, we explore how phylogenetic distance, geographic distance, and geographic variation in climate shape physiological tolerance of high and low temperatures using a global dataset of ant thermal tolerances. We found generally strong roles for evolutionary history and geographic variation in temperature, but essentially no detectable effects of spatial proximity per se on either upper or lower thermal tolerance. When we compared the relative importance of the factors shaping upper and lower tolerances, we found a much stronger role for evolutionary history in shaping upper versus lower tolerance, and a moderately weaker role for geographic variation in temperature in shaping upper tolerance when compared with lower tolerance. Our results demonstrate how geographic variation in climate and evolutionary history may have differential effects on the upper and lower endpoints of physiological tolerance. This Janus effect, where the relative contributions of geographic variation in climate and evolutionary history are reversed for lower versus upper physiological tolerances, has gained some support in the literature, and our results for ant physiological tolerances provide further evidence of this pattern. As the climate continues to change, the high phylogenetic conservatism of upper tolerance may suggest potential constraints on the evolution of tolerance of high temperatures.

SUBMITTER: Diamond SE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5905527 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

The Janus of macrophysiology: stronger effects of evolutionary history, but weaker effects of climate on upper thermal limits are reversed for lower thermal limits in ants.

Diamond Sarah E SE Chick Lacy D LD

Current zoology 20171128 2

Species may exhibit similar traits via different mechanisms: environmental filtering and local adaptation (geography) and shared evolutionary history (phylogeny) can each contribute to the resemblance of traits among species. Parsing trait variation into geographic and phylogenetic sources is important, as each suggests different constraints on trait evolution. Here, we explore how phylogenetic distance, geographic distance, and geographic variation in climate shape physiological tolerance of hi ...[more]

PMID: 30402063

Similar Datasets

Project description:Thermal effluents from nuclear power plants greatly change the environmental and ecological conditions of the receiving marine water body, but knowledge about their impact on microbial ecology is limited. Here we used high-throughput sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene to examine marine bacterioplankton metacommunity assembly across thermal gradients in two representative seasons (i.e., winter and summer) in a subtropical bay located on the northern coast of the South China Sea. We found high heterogeneity in bacterioplankton community compositions (BCCs) across thermal gradients and between seasons. The spatially structured temperature gradient created by thermal effluents was the key determinant of BCCs, but its influence differed by season. Using a metacommunity approach, we found that in the thermal discharge area, i.e., where water is frequently exchanged with surrounding seawater and thermal effluent water, the BCC spatial patterns were shaped by species sorting rather than by mass effects from surrounding seawater or by dilution of thermal effluent water by surrounding seawater. However, this effect of species sorting was weaker in summer than in winter seawater. In both seasons, the bacterioplankton community structure was predominately determined by niche sharing; however, the relative importance of niche segregation was enhanced in summer seawater. Our findings suggest that for the seasonal differences in metacommunity processes, the BCCs of subtropical summer seawater were more sensitive to temperature and were more difficult to predict than those of winter seawater in the face of different intensities of thermal impacts.IMPORTANCE Understanding the mechanisms of bacterial community assembly across environmental gradients is one of the major goals of marine microbial ecology. Thermal effluents from two nuclear power plants have been present in the subtropical Daya Bay for more than 20 years and have generated a comparatively stable and long thermal gradient (a temperature increase from 0 to 10°C). The environmental patches across thermal gradients are heterogeneous and very strongly interconnected on a microbial scale; thus, this is a useful model for the study of the metacommunity processes (i.e., patch dynamics, species sorting, mass effects, and neutral processes) that underlie marine bacterioplankton assembly. The significance of our research is to reveal how environmental conditions and dispersal-related processes interact to influence bacterioplankton metacommunity processes and their seasonal differences across thermal gradients. Our results may advance the understanding of marine microbial ecology under future conditions of global warming.

Dataset Information

The Janus of macrophysiology: stronger effects of evolutionary history, but weaker effects of climate on upper thermal limits are reversed for lower thermal limits in ants.

Publications

The Janus of macrophysiology: stronger effects of evolutionary history, but weaker effects of climate on upper thermal limits are reversed for lower thermal limits in ants.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets