Phylogenetic structure of local communities predicts the size of the regional species pool

There is a long tradition in ecology of evaluating the relative contribution of the regional species pool and local interactions on the structure of local communities. Similarly, a growing number of studies assess the phylogenetic structure of communities, relative to that in the regional species pool, to examine the interplay between broad-scale evolutionary and fine-scale ecological processes. Finally, a renewed interest in the influence of species source pools on communities has shown that the definition of the source pool influences interpretations of patterns of community structure. We use a continent-wide dataset of local ant communities and implement ecologically explicit source pool definitions to examine the relative importance of regional species pools and local interactions for shaping community structure. Then we assess which factors underlie systematic variation in the structure of communities along climatic gradients. We find that the average phylogenetic relatedness of species in ant communities decreases from tropical to temperate regions, but the strength of this relationship depends on the level of ecological realism in the definition of source pools. We conclude that the evolution of climatic niches influences the phylogenetic structure of regional source pools and that the influence of regional source pools on local community structure is strong.

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Greater local diversity under older species pools may arise from enhanced competitive equivalence

10.1101/2020.04.20.052316 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Devin R. Leopold ◽

Tadashi Fukami

Keyword(s):

Species Interactions ◽

Fungal Species ◽

Local Communities ◽

Species Pool ◽

Minor Role ◽

Ecological Communities ◽

Local Diversity ◽

Species Pools ◽

Regional Species Pool ◽

Local Species

AbstractLocal ecological communities tend to contain more species when they are located within a geologically older region, a pattern that has traditionally been attributed to the accumulation of species in the regional species pool. In this explanation, local species interactions are assumed to play a minor role in the formation of the regional species pool, which is instead thought to be driven by speciation and dispersal occurring across larger areas. Here, we provide evidence suggesting a more important role of local species interactions than generally assumed. In an experiment in which we assembled 320 local communities of root-associated fungi under 80 species pools, we varied the species richness of the experimental species pools and the mean age of the sites from which we collected the fungal species across a 4-myr soil chronosequence in Hawaii. We found that realized local species diversity in the assembled communities increased more extensively with increasing species-pool richness when species were from older sites. We also found that older species pools had lower functional and phylogenetic diversity, indicating that the evolution of greater competitive equivalence among potential colonists enabled higher local diversity under older species pools. Our results suggest that the tendency of older regions to have higher local richness arises not simply because older species pools are more speciose, but also because the constituent species have evolved traits that allow them to co-occur more readily in local communities.

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How to determine a regional species pool: a study in two Swedish regions

Oikos ◽

10.1034/j.1600-0706.2000.890114.x ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 89 (1) ◽

pp. 128-136 ◽

Cited By ~ 44

Author(s):

Cecilia Dupre

Keyword(s):

Species Pool ◽

Regional Species Pool

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Species ethnobotanical values rather than regional species pool determine plant diversity in agroforestry systems

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-03408-3 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Daniel K. N’Woueni ◽

Orou G. Gaoue

Keyword(s):

Species Diversity ◽

Plant Species ◽

Plant Diversity ◽

Agroforestry Systems ◽

Natural Vegetation ◽

Species Pool ◽

Higher Plant ◽

Natural Habitats ◽

Natural Systems ◽

Regional Species Pool

AbstractThe conversion of natural systems into farms and agroecosystems is the main cause of biodiversity loss. In human-dominated landscapes, understanding the interactions between agroforestry systems and adjacent natural vegetation is fundamental to developing sustainable agricultural systems. Species can move between these two systems with natural systems providing the regional pool of species that shape the agricultural values and conservation value of the agroforestry systems. We investigated the influence of neighboring natural habitats on traditional agroforestry systems in the buffer zone of Pendjari Biosphere Reserve in Benin to understand the contribution of regional processes on the quality of agroforestry systems. We expected that agroforestry parklands adjacent to natural vegetation with high species diversity will also have higher plant species diversity. We found no similarity in plant species composition between agroforestry systems and adjacent natural habitats. A small proportion of species in adjacent natural habitats were found in agroforestry systems. The proportion of shared species was not significantly influenced by plant diversity in adjacent natural habitats or the distance from the agroforestry systems to the natural adjacent habitat. However, plant diversity in agroforestry systems was strongly associated with site ethnobotanical values indicating that farmers act as a supplemental but severe environmental filter of the regional species pool. Our study suggests that promoting the plantation of plants with high ethnobotanical use-value is a potentially viable strategy for sustainable agriculture and ecological restoration in Biosphere reserves.

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Community assembly and species traits

Community Ecology ◽

10.1093/oso/9780198835851.003.0012 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 231-246

Author(s):

Gary G. Mittelbach ◽

Brian J. McGill

Keyword(s):

Functional Traits ◽

Community Assembly ◽

Species Traits ◽

Fundamental Question ◽

Species Pool ◽

Environmental Filters ◽

Abiotic Environment ◽

Local Site ◽

Powerful Approach ◽

Regional Species Pool

There is perhaps no more fundamental question in ecology than what determines the number and kinds of species found in a community and their relative abundances. This chapter lays out a powerful approach to answering this question, based on the concepts of a regional species pool and environmental filters. The species pool is the set of species that could potentially colonize a local site or community. Of these potential colonists, some species are limited in their ability to disperse to site, some are limited by their ability to survive the abiotic environment, and some are limited by their interactions with other species. These “filters” act individually or in concert, and the functional traits of species determine their success in passing through these filters to colonize a local site. There is growing empirical evidence that both abiotic and biotic processes select for specific functional traits. Focusing on the functional traits of species may lead to rules of community assembly that are general and help unify a variety of more specific theories.

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Building a Robust, Densely-Sampled Spider Tree of Life for Ecosystem Research

Diversity ◽

10.3390/d12080288 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 12 (8) ◽

pp. 288

Author(s):

Nuria Macías-Hernández ◽

Marc Domènech ◽

Pedro Cardoso ◽

Brent C. Emerson ◽

Paulo Alexandre Vieira Borges ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Phylogenetic Trees ◽

Phylogenetic Diversity ◽

Dna Barcode ◽

Phylogenetic Reconstruction ◽

Local Communities ◽

Background Information ◽

Ecological Processes ◽

Phylogenetic Structure ◽

Topological Constraint ◽

Ecosystem Research

Phylogenetic relatedness is a key diversity measure for the analysis and understanding of how species and communities evolve across time and space. Understanding the nonrandom loss of species with respect to phylogeny is also essential for better-informed conservation decisions. However, several factors are known to influence phylogenetic reconstruction and, ultimately, phylogenetic diversity metrics. In this study, we empirically tested how some of these factors (topological constraint, taxon sampling, genetic markers and calibration) affect phylogenetic resolution and uncertainty. We built a densely sampled, species-level phylogenetic tree for spiders, combining Sanger sequencing of species from local communities of two biogeographical regions (Iberian Peninsula and Macaronesia) with a taxon-rich backbone matrix of Genbank sequences and a topological constraint derived from recent phylogenomic studies. The resulting tree constitutes the most complete spider phylogeny to date, both in terms of terminals and background information, and may serve as a standard reference for the analysis of phylogenetic diversity patterns at the community level. We then used this tree to investigate how partial data affect phylogenetic reconstruction, phylogenetic diversity estimates and their rankings, and, ultimately, the ecological processes inferred for each community. We found that the incorporation of a single slowly evolving marker (28S) to the DNA barcode sequences from local communities, had the highest impact on tree topology, closely followed by the use of a backbone matrix. The increase in missing data resulting from combining partial sequences from local communities only had a moderate impact on the resulting trees, similar to the difference observed when using topological constraints. Our study further revealed substantial differences in both the phylogenetic structure and diversity rankings of the analyzed communities estimated from the different phylogenetic treatments, especially when using non-ultrametric trees (phylograms) instead of time-stamped trees (chronograms). Finally, we provide some recommendations on reconstructing phylogenetic trees to infer phylogenetic diversity within ecological studies.

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Trait-Based Filtering of the Regional Species Pool to Guide Understory Plant Reintroductions in Midwestern Oak Savannas, U.S.A.

Restoration Ecology ◽

10.1111/j.1526-100x.2007.00317.x ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 16 (2) ◽

pp. 290-304 ◽

Cited By ~ 26

Author(s):

Lars A. Brudvig ◽

Catherine M. Mabry

Keyword(s):

Species Pool ◽

Oak Savannas ◽

Regional Species Pool ◽

Understory Plant ◽

Plant Reintroductions

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Can long-distance dispersal shape the local and regional species pool?

Folia Geobotanica ◽

10.1007/bf02803042 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 40 (1) ◽

pp. 35-44 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Martin Zobel ◽

Merit Otsus ◽

Kai Rünk ◽

Jaan Liira

Keyword(s):

Species Pool ◽

Long Distance Dispersal ◽

Long Distance ◽

Regional Species Pool

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Different Effects of Regional Species Pool on Plant Diversity between Forest and Grassland Biomes in Arid Northwest China

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0131982 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 10 (7) ◽

pp. e0131982 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Liping Li ◽

Yining Liu ◽

Xiangping Wang ◽

Jingyun Fang ◽

Qingchun Wang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Plant Diversity ◽

Northwest China ◽

Species Pool ◽

Regional Species Pool ◽

Arid Northwest China

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Networks of epiphytic orchids and host trees in Brazilian gallery forests

Journal of Tropical Ecology ◽

10.1017/s0266467409990551 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 26 (2) ◽

pp. 127-137 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Igor A. Silva ◽

Alessandro W. C. Ferreira ◽

Maria I. S. Lima ◽

João J. Soares

Keyword(s):

Tree Species ◽

Species Interactions ◽

Host Tree ◽

Binary Interaction ◽

Phylogenetic Structure ◽

Epiphytic Orchids ◽

Host Trees ◽

Regional Species Pool ◽

Gallery Forests ◽

Host Tree Species

Abstract:Species interactions have been recently depicted as networks, in which each species is connected to one or more other species in binary interaction matrices. Forty networks of epiphytic orchid and host tree species were assessed in Brazilian gallery forests. The nestedness of the networks was estimated with the NODF index and the significance was tested with null models. The phylogenetic structure of the network was also assessed, by searching for phylogenetic signals in the number of interactions and in the similarity of interacting species. In total, 105 orchid species and 132 host tree species were sampled. A nested pattern in all orchid–host tree networks was found. However, phylogenetic signals were not observed. The results support that the host specificity of orchids is small and most of the interactions occur among generalist orchids and generalist host trees. While the concept of species-specificity can thus be rejected, the extreme alternative – that interacting orchids and host trees are not a random subset of the regional species pool – can be dismissed as well. However, factors other than phylogenetic history may structure interaction networks of epiphytic orchids and host trees.

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