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Geographic patterns of insect diversity across China's nature reserves: The roles of niche conservatism and range overlapping.

ABSTRACT: Aim:Insects are the most species-rich clade in the world, but the broad-scale diversity pattern and the potential drivers have not been well documented for the clade as a whole. We aimed to examine the relative roles of contemporary and historical climate, niche conservatism, range overlapping, and other environmental factors on geographic patterns of species richness and phylogenetic structure, for insects across China. Location:China. Methods:We collected insect data from 184 nature reserves and examined geographic patterns of species richness and mean root distance (MRD, a metric of the evolutionary development of assemblages) for different biogeographic affinities (Palearctic, Oriental, and widespread species) and for clades originated during the warm and cold geohistorical periods ("warm clades" and "cold clades," respectively). We related richness and MRD to contemporary and historical climate, area, habitat heterogeneity, and human disturbance to evaluate their relative importance. Results:Total species richness revealed a hump-shaped latitudinal pattern, peaking between 30°~35°N. Richness patterns differed markedly among evolutionary groups: Oriental species richness decreased significantly with higher latitude but Palearctic species increased, while other groups again peaked between 30°~35°N. The range overlapping of different biogeographic groups in midlatitudes may be an important contributor to humped latitudinal richness patterns. MRD was positively related to latitude and increased more rapidly for "warm clades" than "cold clades." Historical climate factors (especially winter coldness) were among the strongest predictors for both richness and phylogenetic patterns, for each evolutionary group, suggesting the strong influence of niche conservatism. Conclusions:The hump-shaped latitudinal pattern of insect richness in China is mainly shaped by niche conservatism and range overlapping, supplemented by habitat heterogeneity and contemporary climate. The role of niche conservatism and range overlapping may have been overlooked if only total species richness was analyzed, suggesting the importance of examining different evolutionary groups separately.

SUBMITTER: Lyu Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7141035 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Geographic patterns of insect diversity across China's nature reserves: The roles of niche conservatism and range overlapping.

Lyu Yueming Y Wang Xiangping X Luo Juchun J

Ecology and evolution 20200314 7

<h4>Aim</h4>Insects are the most species-rich clade in the world, but the broad-scale diversity pattern and the potential drivers have not been well documented for the clade as a whole. We aimed to examine the relative roles of contemporary and historical climate, niche conservatism, range overlapping, and other environmental factors on geographic patterns of species richness and phylogenetic structure, for insects across China.<h4>Location</h4>China.<h4>Methods</h4>We collected insect data from ...[more]

PMID: 32273988

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Project description:1. The prevalence of phylogenetic niche conservatism (PNC) in nature is still a conflicting issue. Disagreement arises from confusion over its precise definition and the variety of approaches to measure its prevalence. Recent work highlighted that common measures of PNC strongly depend on the assumptions of the underlying model of niche evolution. However, this warning has not been well recognized in the applied literature and questionable approaches are still frequently applied. 2. The aim of this paper is to draw attention to the assumptions underlying commonly applied simple measures of PNC. We used a series of simulations to illustrate how misleading results can be if assumptions of niche evolution are violated, that the violation of assumptions is a common phenomenon and that testing assumptions requires in-depth pre-test. 3. We conclude that the seemingly simple measures of PNC, such as phylogenetic sign6al and evolutionary rate, are not so easy to apply if one accounts for the necessity to test model assumptions. In addition, these measures can be difficult to interpret. The common assumption that strong phylogenetic signal indicates PNC will be often invalid. In addition, the interpretation of some measures, e.g. the conclusion that evolutionary rate is slow enough to indicate PNC, requires a comparison with another clade, another trait or well-developed null model assumptions and thus additional data. 4. We suggest that studies investigating PNC should always compare alternative evolutionary models, and that model comparisons should in particular include flexible niche evolution models such as multiple-optima OU models, although these are computational intensive. These models are directly inherited from the concept of macro-evolutionary adaptive landscape, and can indicate PNC either by relative few peak shifts or by narrow peaks in the adaptive landscape. A test of PNC thus requires comparing these parameters of the macroevolutionary landscape between clades or time periods. 5. The general prevalence of PNC in nature should be evaluated only based on studies keeping up to the high standards of communicating the used definition of PNC, testing the assumptions made in the modelling approaches and including newly developed models in a model comparison approach.

Project description:Background and aimsClimate is an important parameter in delimiting coarse-grained aspects of fundamental ecological niches of species; evolution of these niches has been considered a key component in biological diversification. We assessed phylogenetic niche conservatism and evolution in 24 species of the family Oleaceae in relation to temperature and precipitation variables. We studied niches of 17 Olea species and 7 species from other genera of Oleaceae globally.MethodsWe used nuclear ribosomal and plastid DNA to reconstruct an evolutionary tree for the family. We used an approach designed specifically to incorporate uncertainty and incomplete knowledge of species' ecological niche limits. We performed parsimony- and likelihood-based reconstructions of ancestral states on two independent phylogenetic hypotheses for the family. After detailed analysis, species' niches were classified into warm and cold niches, wet and dry niches, and broad and narrow niches.Key resultsGiven that full estimates of fundamental niches are difficult, we explore the alternative approach of explicit incorporation of knowledge of gaps in the information available, which allows avoidance of overestimation of amounts of evolutionary change. The result is a first synthetic view of evolutionary dynamics of ecological niches and distributional potential in a widespread plant family. Temperate regions of the Earth were occupied only by lineages that could derive with cold and dry niches; Southeast Asia held species with warm and wet niches; and parts of Africa held only species with dry niches.ConclusionsHigh temperature in Lutetian (Oligocene) and low temperature in Rupelian (Eocene) with major desertification events play important role for niche retraction and expansion in the history for Oleaceae clades. Associations between environmental niche characteristics and phylogeny reconstruction play an important role in understanding ecological niche conservatism, the overall picture was relatively slow or conservative niche evolution in this group.

Project description:Nature reserves are widely considered as one available strategy for protecting biodiversity, which is threatened by habitat fragmentation, and wildlife extinction. The Chinese government has established a goal of protecting 15% of its land area by 2015. We quantitated the characteristics and distribution of nature reserves in mainland China and evaluated the expansion process for national nature reserves. National nature reserves occupy 64.15% of the total area of nature reserves. Steppe and meadow ecosystem, ocean and seacoast ecosystem, and wild plant nature reserves represent lower percentages, particularly in national nature reserves, in which they comprised 0.76%, 0.54%, and 0.69%, respectively, of the area. Furthermore, medium and small nature reserves compose 92.32% of all nature reserves. The land area under any legal protection has reached 14.80%, although only 9.78% is strictly protected. However, if 9 super-large national nature reserves, located in Southwest and Northwest China were removed, the percentage of strictly protected area decreases to 2.66% of the land area of China. The areas contained in nature reserves in each province are not proportional to the areas of the provinces, particularly for national nature reserves, with higher protection rates in Southwest and Northwest China than in other regions. Of the 31 provinces, 22 provinces feature strict protection of less than 4% of their areas by national nature reserves; these provinces are mainly located in East, Central, South, and North China. Moreover, the unevenness indexes of the distribution of nature reserves and national nature reserves are 0.39 and 0.58, respectively. The construction of nature reserves has entered a steady development stage after a period of rapid expansion in mainland China. In recent years, the total area of national nature reserves has increased slowly, while the total area of nature reserves has not increased, although the number of nature reserves continues increase.

Dataset Information

Geographic patterns of insect diversity across China's nature reserves: The roles of niche conservatism and range overlapping.

Publications

Geographic patterns of insect diversity across China's nature reserves: The roles of niche conservatism and range overlapping.

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