Phylogenetic conservatism of environmental niches in mammals

Phylogenetic niche conservatism is the pattern where close relatives occupy similar niches, whereas distant relatives are more dissimilar. We suggest that niche conservatism will vary across clades in relation to their characteristics. Specifically, we investigate how conservatism of environmental niches varies among mammals according to their latitude, range size, body size and specialization. We use the Brownian rate parameter, σ2, to measure the rate of evolution in key variables related to the ecological niche and define the more conserved group as the one with the slower rate of evolution. We find that tropical, small-ranged and specialized mammals have more conserved thermal niches than temperate, large-ranged or generalized mammals. Partitioning niche conservatism into its spatial and phylogenetic components, we find that spatial effects on niche variables are generally greater than phylogenetic effects. This suggests that recent evolution and dispersal have more influence on species' niches than more distant evolutionary events. These results have implications for our understanding of the role of niche conservatism in species richness patterns and for gauging the potential for species to adapt to global change.

[1]  M. Donoghue,et al.  Historical biogeography, ecology and species richness. , 2004, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[2]  Richard E. Glor,et al.  Niche lability in the evolution of a Caribbean lizard community , 2003, Nature.

[3]  Kate E. Jones,et al.  The delayed rise of present-day mammals , 1990, Nature.

[4]  C. Graham,et al.  INTEGRATING PHYLOGENETICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL NICHE MODELS TO EXPLORE SPECIATION MECHANISMS IN DENDROBATID FROGS , 2004, Evolution; international journal of organic evolution.

[5]  G. C. Stevens.  The Latitudinal Gradient in Geographical Range: How so Many Species Coexist in the Tropics , 1989, The American Naturalist.

[6]  Robert K. Colwell,et al.  Species Richness and Evolutionary Niche Dynamics: A Spatial Pattern–Oriented Simulation Experiment , 2007, The American Naturalist.

[7]  C. Graham,et al.  Niche Conservatism: Integrating Evolution, Ecology, and Conservation Biology , 2005 .

[8]  Michael J. Sanderson,et al.  TESTING FOR DIFFERENT RATES OF CONTINUOUS TRAIT EVOLUTION USING LIKELIHOOD , 2006, Evolution; international journal of organic evolution.

[9]  Erik A. Beever,et al.  PATTERNS OF APPARENT EXTIRPATION AMONG ISOLATED POPULATIONS OF PIKAS (OCHOTONA PRINCEPS) IN THE GREAT BASIN , 2003 .

[10]  B. Lundrigan,et al.  Climate‐induced changes in the small mammal communities of the Northern Great Lakes Region , 2009 .

[11]  Walter Jetz,et al.  Space versus phylogeny: disentangling phylogenetic and spatial signals in comparative data , 2009, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[12]  J. Terborgh.  On the Notion of Favorableness in Plant Ecology , 1973, The American Naturalist.

[13]  Campbell O. Webb,et al.  Phylogenies and Community Ecology , 2002 .

[14]  N. Cooper,et al.  Body Size Evolution in Mammals: Complexity in Tempo and Mode , 2010, The American Naturalist.

[15]  R. Freckleton,et al.  Phylogenetic comparative approaches for studying niche conservatism , 2010, Journal of evolutionary biology.

[16]  C. Orme,et al.  Where do species' geographic ranges stop and why? Landscape impermeability and the Afrotropical avifauna , 2009, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[17]  W. Jetz,et al.  Effects of species’ ecology on the accuracy of distribution models , 2007 .

[18]  J. Diniz‐Filho,et al.  Hidden patterns of phylogenetic non-stationarity overwhelm comparative analyses of niche conservatism and divergence , 2010 .

[19]  Antoine Guisan,et al.  Niche dynamics in space and time. , 2008, Trends in ecology & evolution.

[20]  M. Pagel,et al.  Phylogenetic Analysis and Comparative Data: A Test and Review of Evidence , 2002, The American Naturalist.

[21]  D. Ackerly.  Conservatism and diversification of plant functional traits: Evolutionary rates versus phylogenetic signal , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[22]  John-Arvid Grytnes,et al.  Niche conservatism as an emerging principle in ecology and conservation biology. , 2010, Ecology letters.

[23]  Ellen I. Damschen,et al.  Phylogeny, niche conservatism and the latitudinal diversity gradient in mammals , 2010, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[24]  Walter Jetz,et al.  Species richness, hotspots, and the scale dependence of range maps in ecology and conservation , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[25]  Kate E. Jones,et al.  Multiple Causes of High Extinction Risk in Large Mammal Species , 2005, Science.

[26]  P. Hersteinsson,et al.  Interspecific competition and the geographical distribution of red and arctic foxes Vulpes vulpes and Alopex lagopus , 1992 .

[27]  R. Freckleton,et al.  Comparative analyses of the influence of developmental mode on phenotypic diversification rates in shorebirds , 2006, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[28]  Thomas F Hansen,et al.  ASSESSING CURRENT ADAPTATION AND PHYLOGENETIC INERTIA AS EXPLANATIONS OF TRAIT EVOLUTION:THE NEED FOR CONTROLLED COMPARISONS , 2005, Evolution; international journal of organic evolution.

[29]  A. Peterson,et al.  Evidence of climatic niche shift during biological invasion. , 2007, Ecology letters.

[30]  Kate E. Jones,et al.  PanTHERIA: a species‐level database of life history, ecology, and geography of extant and recently extinct mammals , 2009 .

[31]  J. Losos.  Phylogenetic niche conservatism, phylogenetic signal and the relationship between phylogenetic relatedness and ecological similarity among species. , 2008, Ecology letters.

[32]  J. Diniz‐Filho,et al.  Macroevolutionary dynamics in environmental space and the latitudinal diversity gradient in New World birds , 2007, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[33]  J. Diniz‐Filho,et al.  Spatial autocorrelation and red herrings in geographical ecology , 2003 .

[34]  David R. B. Stockwell,et al.  Future projections for Mexican faunas under global climate change scenarios , 2002, Nature.

[35]  R. A. Pyron,et al.  Can the tropical conservatism hypothesis explain temperate species richness patterns? An inverse latitudinal biodiversity gradient in the New World snake tribe Lampropeltini , 2009 .

[36]  J. Felsenstein.  Phylogenies and the Comparative Method , 1985, The American Naturalist.

[37]  M. Turelli,et al.  Environmental Niche Equivalency versus Conservatism: Quantitative Approaches to Niche Evolution , 2008, Evolution; international journal of organic evolution.

[38]  Bruce D. Patterson,et al.  The Status of the World's Land and Marine Mammals: Diversity, Threat, and Knowledge , 2008, Science.

[39]  Kevin J. Gaston,et al.  The structure and dynamics of geographic ranges , 2003 .

[40]  Scott L. Wing,et al.  Ecological conservatism in the “living fossil” Ginkgo , 2003, Paleobiology.

[41]  M. Pagel.  Inferring the historical patterns of biological evolution , 1999, Nature.

[42]  W. Jetz,et al.  Characterizing and predicting species distributions across environments and scales: Argentine ant occurrences in the eye of the beholder , 2009 .

[43]  C. Dormann,et al.  Evolution of climate niches in European mammals? , 2010, Biology Letters.

[44]  Robert D. Holt,et al.  On the evolutionary ecology of species' ranges , 2003 .

[45]  L. Revell.  On the Analysis of Evolutionary Change along Single Branches in a Phylogeny , 2008, The American Naturalist.

[46]  R. Ricklefs.  Evolutionary diversification and the origin of the diversity-environment relationship. , 2006, Ecology.

[47]  L. Revell,et al.  Phylogenetic signal, evolutionary process, and rate. , 2008, Systematic biology.

[48]  Jorge Soberón.  Grinnellian and Eltonian niches and geographic distributions of species. , 2007, Ecology letters.

[49]  Jack J. Lennon,et al.  Red-shifts and red herrings in geographical ecology , 2000 .

[50]  A. Dobson,et al.  Projected Impacts of Climate and Land-Use Change on the Global Diversity of Birds , 2007, PLoS biology.

[51]  H. L. Miller,et al.  Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis , 2007 .

[52]  Kate E. Jones,et al.  Erratum: The delayed rise of present-day mammals , 2008 .

[53]  M. Hulme,et al.  A high-resolution data set of surface climate over global land areas , 2002 .

[54]  V. Sánchez‐Cordero,et al.  Conservatism of ecological niches in evolutionary time , 1999, Science.

[55]  E. Martins.  The Comparative Method in Evolutionary Biology, Paul H. Harvey, Mark D. Pagel. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1991), vii, + 239 Price $24.95 paperback , 1992 .