scholarly journals A new approach to integrate phylogenetic structure and partner availability to study biotic specialization in ecological networks

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos J. Pardo-De la Hoz ◽  
Ian D. Medeiros ◽  
Jean Philippe Gibert ◽  
Pierre-Luc Chagnon ◽  
Nicolas Magain
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Ecological Networks ◽  
Phylogenetic Structure ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Biological Communities ◽  
Avian Seed Dispersal ◽  
Empirical Networks ◽  
Host Parasite

Biotic specialization holds information about the assembly, evolution and stability of biological communities. Phylogenetic diversity metrics have been used to quantify biotic specialization, but their current implementations do not adequately account for the availability of the interacting partners. Also, the overdispersed pattern of phylogenetic specialization has been misinterpreted as an attribute of generalists. We developed an approach that resolves these issues by accounting for partner availability to quantify the phylogenetic structure of specialization (i.e., clustered, overdispersed, or random) in ecological networks. We showed that our approach avoids biases of previous methods. We also implemented it on empirical networks of host-parasite, avian seed-dispersal, lichenized fungi-cyanobacteria and coral-dinoflagellate interactions. We found a large proportion of taxa that interact with phylogenetically random partners, in some cases to a larger extent than detected with an existing method that does not account for partner availability. We also found many taxa that interact with phylogenetically clustered partners, while taxa with overdispersed partners were rare. Our results highlight the important role of randomness in shaping interaction networks, even in highly intimate symbioses, and provide a much-needed quantitative framework to assess the role that evolutionary history and symbiotic specialization play in shaping patterns of biodiversity.

A host-endoparasite network of Neotropical marine fish: are there organizational patterns?

Parasitology ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 138 (14) ◽  
pp. 1945-1952 ◽  
Author(s):  
SYBELLE BELLAY ◽  
DILERMANDO P. LIMA ◽  
RICARDO M. TAKEMOTO ◽  
JOSÉ L. LUQUE
Keyword(s):  
Marine Fish ◽  
Environmental Changes ◽  
Keystone Species ◽  
Ecological Networks ◽  
Interaction Patterns ◽  
Low Degree ◽  
Organizational Patterns ◽  
Host Parasite ◽  
Species Segregation

SUMMARYProperties of ecological networks facilitate the understanding of interaction patterns in host-parasite systems as well as the importance of each species in the interaction structure of a community. The present study evaluates the network structure, functional role of all species and patterns of parasite co-occurrence in a host-parasite network to determine the organization level of a host-parasite system consisting of 170 taxa of gastrointestinal metazoans of 39 marine fish species on the coast of Brazil. The network proved to be nested and modular, with a low degree of connectance. Host-parasite interactions were influenced by host phylogeny. Randomness in parasite co-occurrence was observed in most modules and component communities, although species segregation patterns were also observed. The low degree of connectance in the network may be the cause of properties such as nestedness and modularity, which indicate the presence of a high number of peripheral species. Segregation patterns among parasite species in modules underscore the role of host specificity. Knowledge of ecological networks allows detection of keystone species for the maintenance of biodiversity and the conduction of further studies on the stability of networks in relation to frequent environmental changes.

scholarly journals Conserving evolutionary history does not result in greater diversity over geological time scales

2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1904) ◽  
pp. 20182896 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Cantalapiedra ◽  
T. Aze ◽  
M. W. Cadotte ◽  
G. V. Dalla Riva ◽  
D. Huang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Time Scales ◽  
Phylogenetic Trees ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Random Sets ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
The Future ◽  
Species Production

Alternative prioritization strategies have been proposed to safeguard biodiversity over macroevolutionary time scales. The first prioritizes the most distantly related species—maximizing phylogenetic diversity (PD)—in the hopes of capturing at least some lineages that will successfully diversify into the future. The second prioritizes lineages that are currently speciating, in the hopes that successful lineages will continue to generate species into the future. These contrasting schemes also map onto contrasting predictions about the role of slow diversifiers in the production of biodiversity over palaeontological time scales. We consider the performance of the two schemes across 10 dated species-level palaeo-phylogenetic trees ranging from Foraminifera to dinosaurs. We find that prioritizing PD for conservation generally led to fewer subsequent lineages, while prioritizing diversifiers led to modestly more subsequent diversity, compared with random sets of lineages. Importantly for conservation, the tree shape when decisions are made cannot predict which scheme will be most successful. These patterns are inconsistent with the notion that long-lived lineages are the source of new species. While there may be sound reasons for prioritizing PD for conservation, long-term species production might not be one of them.

Identifying co-phylogenetic hotspots for zoonotic disease

2021 ◽  
Vol 376 (1837) ◽  
pp. 20200363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alaina C. Pfenning-Butterworth ◽  
T. Jonathan Davies ◽  
Clayton E. Cressler
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Phylogenetic Analyses ◽  
Emerging Infectious Diseases ◽  
To Come ◽  
Association Data ◽  
Zoonotic Parasites ◽  
Close Relatives ◽  
Host Parasite ◽  
Phylogenetic Models

The incidence of zoonotic diseases is increasing worldwide, which makes identifying parasites likely to become zoonotic and hosts likely to harbour zoonotic parasites a critical concern. Prior work indicates that there is a higher risk of zoonotic spillover accruing from closely related hosts and from hosts that are infected with a high phylogenetic diversity of parasites. This suggests that host and parasite evolutionary history may be important drivers of spillover, but identifying whether host–parasite associations are more strongly structured by the host, parasite or both requires co-phylogenetic analyses that combine host–parasite association data with host and parasite phylogenies. Here, we use host–parasite datasets containing associations between helminth taxa and free-range mammals in combination with phylogenetic models to explore whether host, parasite, or both host and parasite evolutionary history influences host–parasite associations. We find that host phylogenetic history is most important for driving patterns of helminth-mammal association, indicating that zoonoses are most likely to come from a host's close relatives. More broadly, our results suggest that co-phylogenetic analyses across broad taxonomic scales can provide a novel perspective for surveying potential emerging infectious diseases. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Infectious disease macroecology: parasite diversity and dynamics across the globe’.

scholarly journals Conserving Phylogenetic Diversity can be a Poor Strategy for Conserving Functional Diversity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florent Mazel ◽  
Arne Mooers ◽  
Giulio Valentino Dalla Riva ◽  
Matthew W. Pennell
Keyword(s):  
Functional Diversity ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Phylogenetic Signal ◽  
Evolutionary Model ◽  
Random Set ◽  
Phylogenetic Structure ◽  
General Utility ◽  
Complex Interactions ◽  
First Time

AbstractFor decades, academic biologists have advocated for making conservation decisions in light of evolutionary history. Specifically, they suggest that policymakers should prioritize conserving phylogenetically diverse assemblages. The most prominent argument is that conserving phylogenetic diversity (PD) will also conserve diversity in traits and features (functional diversity; FD), which may be valuable for a number of reasons. The claim that PD-maximized (‘maxPD’) sets of taxa will also have high FD is often taken at face value and in cases where researchers have actually tested it, they have done so by measuring the phylogenetic signal in ecologically important functional traits. The rationale is that if traits closely mirror phylogeny, then saving the maxPD set of taxa will tend to maximize FD and if traits do not have phylogenetic structure, then saving the maxPD set of taxa will be no better at capturing FD than criteria that ignore PD. Here, we suggest that measuring the phylogenetic signal in traits is uninformative for evaluating the effectiveness of using PD in conservation. We evolve traits under several different models and, for the first time, directly compare the FD of a set of taxa that maximize PD to the FD of a random set of the same size. Under many common models of trait evolution and tree shapes, conserving the maxPD set of taxa will conserve more FD than conserving a random set of the same size. However, this result cannot be generalized to other classes of models. We find that under biologically plausible scenarios, using PD to select species can actually lead to less FD compared to a random set. Critically, this can occur even when there is phylogenetic signal in the traits. Predicting exactly when we expect using PD to be a good strategy for conserving FD is challenging, as it depends on complex interactions between tree shape and the assumptions of the evolutionary model. Nonetheless, if our goal is to maintain trait diversity, the fact that conserving taxa based on PD will not reliably conserve at least as much FD as choosing randomly raises serious concerns about the general utility of PD in conservation.

scholarly journals Specificity in the symbiotic association between fungus-growing ants and protective Pseudonocardia bacteria

2010 ◽  
Vol 278 (1713) ◽  
pp. 1814-1822 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matías J. Cafaro ◽  
Michael Poulsen ◽  
Ainslie E. F. Little ◽  
Shauna L. Price ◽  
Nicole M. Gerardo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Antibiotic Production ◽  
Symbiotic Association ◽  
Free Living ◽  
Ant Colonies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Fungus Growing Ants ◽  
Related Fungus

Fungus-growing ants (tribe Attini) engage in a mutualism with a fungus that serves as the ants' primary food source, but successful fungus cultivation is threatened by microfungal parasites (genus Escovopsis ). Actinobacteria (genus Pseudonocardia ) associate with most of the phylogenetic diversity of fungus-growing ants; are typically maintained on the cuticle of workers; and infection experiments, bioassay challenges and chemical analyses support a role of Pseudonocardia in defence against Escovopsis through antibiotic production. Here we generate a two-gene phylogeny for Pseudonocardia associated with 124 fungus-growing ant colonies, evaluate patterns of ant– Pseudonocardia specificity and test Pseudonocardia antibiotic activity towards Escovopsis . We show that Pseudonocardia associated with fungus-growing ants are not monophyletic: the ants have acquired free-living strains over the evolutionary history of the association. Nevertheless, our analysis reveals a significant pattern of specificity between clades of Pseudonocardia and groups of related fungus-growing ants. Furthermore, antibiotic assays suggest that despite Escovopsis being generally susceptible to inhibition by diverse Actinobacteria, the ant-derived Pseudonocardia inhibit Escovopsis more strongly than they inhibit other fungi, and are better at inhibiting this pathogen than most environmental Pseudonocardia strains tested. Our findings support a model that many fungus-growing ants maintain specialized Pseudonocardia symbionts that help with garden defence.

scholarly journals Quantifying species contributions to ecosystem processes: a global assessment of functional trait and phylogenetic metrics across avian seed-dispersal networks

2016 ◽  
Vol 283 (1844) ◽  
pp. 20161597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander L. Pigot ◽  
Tom Bregman ◽  
Catherine Sheard ◽  
Benjamin Daly ◽  
Rampal S. Etienne ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Functional Trait ◽  
Ecological Functions ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Dietary Specialization ◽  
Niche Complementarity ◽  
Functional Roles ◽  
Avian Seed Dispersal ◽  
Number Of Plant Species

Quantifying the role of biodiversity in ecosystems not only requires understanding the links between species and the ecological functions and services they provide, but also how these factors relate to measurable indices, such as functional traits and phylogenetic diversity. However, these relationships remain poorly understood, especially for heterotrophic organisms within complex ecological networks. Here, we assemble data on avian traits across a global sample of mutualistic plant–frugivore networks to critically assess how the functional roles of frugivores are associated with their intrinsic traits, as well as their evolutionary and functional distinctiveness. We find strong evidence for niche complementarity, with phenotypically and phylogenetically distinct birds interacting with more unique sets of plants. However, interaction strengths—the number of plant species dependent on a frugivore—were unrelated to evolutionary or functional distinctiveness, largely because distinct frugivores tend to be locally rare, and thus have fewer connections across the network. Instead, interaction strengths were better predicted by intrinsic traits, including body size, gape width and dietary specialization. Our analysis provides general support for the use of traits in quantifying species ecological functions, but also highlights the need to go beyond simple metrics of functional or phylogenetic diversity to consider the multiple pathways through which traits may determine ecological processes.

scholarly journals Climate change impacts on the phylogenetic diversity of the world’s terrestrial birds: more than species numbers

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alke Voskamp ◽  
Christian Hof ◽  
Matthias F. Biber ◽  
Thomas Hickler ◽  
Aidin Niamir ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Species Richness ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Phylogenetic Diversity ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Climate Impact ◽  
Species Assemblages ◽  
Potential Threat ◽  
Phylogenetic Structure ◽  
Species Numbers

AbstractOngoing climate change is a major threat to biodiversity and impacts on species distributions and abundances are already evident. Heterogenous responses of species due to varying abiotic tolerances and dispersal abilities have the potential to further amplify or ameliorate these impacts through changes in species assemblages. Here we investigate the impacts of climate change on terrestrial bird distributions and, subsequently, on species richness as well as on different aspects of phylogenetic diversity of species assemblages across the globe. We go beyond previous work by disentangling the potential impacts on assemblage phylogenetic diversity of species gains vs. losses under climate change and compare the projected impacts to randomized assemblage changes.We show that climate change might not only affect species numbers and composition of global species assemblages but could also have profound impacts on assemblage phylogenetic diversity, which, across extensive areas, differ significantly from random changes. Both the projected impacts on phylogenetic diversity and on phylogenetic structure vary greatly across the globe. Projected increases in the evolutionary history contained within species assemblages, associated with either increasing phylogenetic diversification or clustering, are most frequent at high northern latitudes. By contrast, projected declines in evolutionary history, associated with increasing phylogenetic over-dispersion or homogenisation, are projected across all continents.The projected widespread changes in the phylogenetic structure of species assemblages show that changes in species richness do not fully reflect the potential threat from climate change to ecosystems. Our results indicate that the most severe changes to the phylogenetic diversity and structure of species assemblages are likely to be caused by species range shifts rather than range reductions and extinctions. Our findings highlight the importance of considering diverse measures in climate impact assessments and the value of integrating species-specific responses into assessments of entire community changes.

scholarly journals Interactions retain the co-phylogenetic matching that communities lost

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothée Poisot ◽  
Daniel B. Stouffer
Keyword(s):  
Species Interactions ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Phylogenetic Signal ◽  
Ecological Communities ◽  
Evolutionary Time ◽  
Environmental Filters ◽  
Local Effects ◽  
Phylogenetic Structure ◽  
Community Variation ◽  
Host Parasite

Both species and their interactions are affected by changes that occur at evolutionary time-scales, and these changes shape both ecological communities and their phylogenetic structure. That said, extant ecological community structure is contingent upon random chance, environmental filters, and local effects. It is therefore unclear how much ecological signal local communities should retain. Here we show that, in a host–parasite system where species interactions vary substantially over a continental gradient, the ecological significance of individual interactions is maintained across different scales. Notably, this occurs despite the fact that observed community variation at the local scale frequently tends to weaken or remove community-wide phylogenetic signal. When considered in terms of the interplay between community ecology and coevolutionary theory, our results demonstrate that individual interactions are capable and indeed likely to show a consistent signature of past evolutionary history even when woven into communities that do not.

Elaborating the role of reflection and individual differences in the study of folk-economic beliefs

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Arceneaux
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Behavioral Responses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Beliefs

AbstractIntuitions guide decision-making, and looking to the evolutionary history of humans illuminates why some behavioral responses are more intuitive than others. Yet a place remains for cognitive processes to second-guess intuitive responses – that is, to be reflective – and individual differences abound in automatic, intuitive processing as well.

METAMORPHOSES OF THE POSTMODERN DISCOURSEAND CURRENT CHALLENGES NEOMODERNISM

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yu.V. IRKHIN
Keyword(s):  
World Politics ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Postmodern Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Conservative Values

The article analyzes the problems, achievements and contradictions in the genesis of the contemporary postmodern discourse. The author has carried out complex research, systematized and showed the main features and differences of postmodernism and metamodernism, as well as the role of neoliberal values in their development. The author has considered a new approach to the study of society and politics: neomodernist discourse with the dominant conservative values, opposing postmodern theory, methodology and practice he has identified the features of neomodernism: historicism, patriotism and healthy nationalism, populism, transactionalismn and realism in the world politics.

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