The interactive effects of environmental gradient and dispersal shape spatial phylogenetic patterns

Introduction

The emergence and maintenance of biodiversity include interacting environmental conditions, organismal adaptation to such conditions, and dispersal. To understand and quantify such ecological, evolutionary, and spatial processes, observation and interpretation of phylogenetic relatedness across space (e.g., phylogenetic beta diversity) is arguably a way forward as such patterns contain signals from all the processes listed above. However, it remains challenging to extract information about complex eco-evolutionary and spatial processes from phylogenetic patterns.

Methods

We link environmental gradients and organismal dispersal with phylogenetic beta diversity using a trait-based and eco-evolutionary model of diversification along environmental gradients. The combined effect of the environment and dispersal leads to distinct phylogenetic patterns between subsets of species and across geographical distances.

Results and discussion

Steep environmental gradients combined with low dispersal lead to asymmetric phylogenies, a high phylogenetic beta diversity, and the phylogenetic diversity between communities increases linearly along the environmental gradient. High dispersal combined with a less steep environmental gradient leads to symmetric phylogenies, low phylogenetic beta diversity, and the phylogenetic diversity between communities along the gradient increases in a sigmoidal form. By disentangling the eco-evolutionary mechanisms that link such interacting environment and dispersal effects and community phylogenetic patterns, our results improve understanding of biodiversity in general and help interpretation of observed phylogenetic beta diversity.

Remotely sensed between-individual functional trait variation in a temperate forest

Trait-based ecology holds the promise to explain how plant communities work, for example, how functional diversity may support community productivity. However, so far it has been difficult to combine field-based approaches assessing traits at the level of plant individuals with limited spatial coverage and approaches using remote sensing (RS) with complete spatial coverage but assessing traits at the level of vegetation pixels rather than individuals. By delineating all individual-tree crowns within a temperate forest site and then assigning RS-derived trait measures to these trees, we combine the two approaches, allowing us to use general linear models to estimate the influence of taxonomic or environmental variation on between- and within-species variation across contiguous space.We used airborne imaging spectroscopy and laser scanning to collect individual-tree RS data from a mixed conifer-angiosperm forest on a mountain slope extending over 5.5 ha and covering large environmental gradients in elevation as well as light and soil conditions. We derived three biochemical (leaf chlorophyll, carotenoids, and water content) and three architectural traits (plant area index, foliage-height diversity, and canopy height), which had previously been used to characterize plant function, from the RS data. We then quantified the contributions of taxonomic and environmental variation and their interaction to trait variation and partitioned the remaining within-species trait variation into smaller-scale spatial and residual variation. We also investigated the correlation between functional trait and phylogenetic distances at the between-species level. The forest consisted of 13 tree species of which eight occurred in sufficient abundance for quantitative analysis.On average, taxonomic variation between species accounted for more than 15% of trait variation in biochemical traits but only around 5% (still highly significant) in architectural traits. Biochemical trait distances among species also showed a stronger correlation with phylogenetic distances than did architectural trait distances. Light and soil conditions together with elevation explained slightly more variation than taxonomy across all traits, but in particular increased plant area index (light) and reduced canopy height (elevation). Except for foliage-height diversity, all traits were affected by significant interactions between taxonomic and environmental variation, the different responses of the eight species to the within-site environmental gradients potentially contributing to the coexistence of the eight abundant species.We conclude that with high-resolution RS data it is possible to delineate individual-tree crowns within a forest and thus assess functional traits derived from RS data at individual level. With this precondition fulfilled, it is then possible to apply tools commonly used in field-based trait ecology to partition trait variation among individuals into taxonomic and potentially even genetic variation, environmental variation, and interactions between the two. The method proposed here presents a promising way of assessing individual-based trait information with complete spatial coverage and thus allowing analysis of functional diversity at different scales. This information can help to better understand processes shaping community structure, productivity, and stability of forests.

Phylogenetic farming: Can evolutionary history predict crop rotation via the soil microbiome?

Agriculture has long employed phylogenetic rules whereby farmers are encouraged to rotate taxonomically unrelated plants in shared soil. Although this forms a central tenet of sustainable agriculture, strangely, this on-farm "rule of thumb" has never been rigorously tested in a scientific framework. To experimentally evaluate the relationship between phylogenetic distance and crop performance, we used a plant-soil feedback approach whereby 35 crops and weeds varying in their relatedness to tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) were tested in a two-year field experiment. We used community profiling of the bacteria and fungi to determine the extent to which soil microbes contribute to phenotypic differences in crop growth. Overall, tomato yield was ca. 15% lower in soil previously cultivated with tomato; yet, past the species level there was no effect of phylogenetic distance on crop performance. Soil microbial communities, on the other hand, were compositionally more similar between close plant relatives. Random forest regression predicted log10 phylogenetic distance to tomato with moderate accuracy (R 2 = .52), primarily driven by bacteria in the genus Sphingobium. These data indicate that, beyond avoiding conspecifics, evolutionary history contributes little to understanding plant-soil feedbacks in agricultural fields; however, microbial legacies can be predicted by species identity and relatedness.

The productivity-biodiversity relationship varies across diversity dimensions

Understanding the processes that drive the dramatic changes in biodiversity along the productivity gradient remains a major challenge. Insight from simple, bivariate relationships so far has been limited. We combined >11,000 community plots in the French Alps with a molecular phylogeny and trait information for >1200 plant species to simultaneously investigate the relationships between all major biodiversity dimensions and satellite-sensed productivity. Using an approach that tests for differential effects of species dominance, species similarity and the interplay between phylogeny and traits, we demonstrate that unimodal productivity-biodiversity relationships only dominate for taxonomic diversity. In forests, trait and phylogenetic diversity typically increase with productivity, while in grasslands, relationships shift from unimodal to declining with greater land-use intensity. High productivity may increase trait/phylogenetic diversity in ecosystems with few external constraints (forests) by promoting complementary strategies, but under external constraints (managed grasslands) successful strategies are similar and thus the best competitors may be selected.

Contribution of epigenetic variation to adaptation in Arabidopsis

In plants, transgenerational inheritance of some epialleles has been demonstrated but it remains controversial whether epigenetic variation is subject to selection and contributes to adaptation. Simulating selection in a rapidly changing environment, we compare phenotypic traits and epigenetic variation between Arabidopsis thaliana populations grown for five generations under selection and their genetically nearly identical ancestors. Selected populations of two distinct genotypes show significant differences in flowering time and plant architecture, which are maintained for at least 2–3 generations in the absence of selection. While we cannot detect consistent genetic changes, we observe a reduction of epigenetic diversity and changes in the methylation state of about 50,000 cytosines, some of which are associated with phenotypic changes. Thus, we propose that epigenetic variation is subject to selection and can contribute to rapid adaptive responses, although the extent to which epigenetics plays a role in adaptation is still unclear.

Whether plant epigenetic variation is subject to selection and contributes to adaptation is under debate. Here, the authors compare DNA methylation and phenotypes of Arabidopsis lines subject to simulated selection and their nearly isogenic ancestors and provide evidence that epigenetic variation contributes to adaptive responses.

Community disassembly under global change: Evidence in favor of the stress-dominance hypothesis

Ecological theory suggests that communities are not random combinations of species but rather the results of community assembly processes filtering and sorting species that are able to coexist together. To date, such processes (i.e., assembly rules) have been inferred from observed spatial patterns of biodiversity combined with null model approaches, but relatively few attempts have been made to assess how these processes may be changing through time. Specifically, in the context of the ongoing biodiversity crisis and global change, understanding how processes shaping communities may be changing and identifying the potential drivers underlying these changes become increasingly critical. Here, we used time series of 460 French freshwater fish communities and assessed both functional and phylogenetic diversity patterns to determine the relative importance of two key assembly rules (i.e., habitat filtering and limiting similarity) in shaping these communities over the last two decades. We aimed to (a) describe the temporal changes in both functional and phylogenetic diversity patterns, (b) determine to what extent temporal changes in processes inferred through the use of standardized diversity indices were congruent, and (c) test the relationships between the dynamics of assembly rules and both climatic and biotic drivers. Our results revealed that habitat filtering, although already largely predominant over limiting similarity, became more widespread over time. We also highlighted that phylogenetic and trait-based approaches offered complementary information about temporal changes in assembly rules. Finally, we found that increased environmental harshness over the study period (especially higher seasonality of temperature) led to an increase in habitat filtering and that biological invasions increased functional redundancy within communities. Overall, these findings underlie the need to develop temporal perspectives in community assembly studies, as understanding ongoing temporal changes could provide a better vision about the way communities could respond to future global changes.

Contrasting Patterns of Species Richness and Functional Diversity in Bird Communities of East African Cloud Forest Fragments

Rapid fragmentation and degradation of large undisturbed habitats constitute major threats to biodiversity. Several studies have shown that populations in small and highly isolated habitat patches are prone to strong environmental and demographic stochasticity and increased risk of extinction. Based on community assembly theory, we predict recent rapid forest fragmentation to cause a decline in species and functional guild richness of forest birds combined with a high species turnover among habitat patches, and well defined dominance structures, if competition is the major driver of community assembly. To test these predictions, we analysed species co-occurrence, nestedness, and competitive strength to infer effects of interspecific competition, habitat structure, and species' traits on the assembly of bird species communities from 12 cloud forest fragments in southern Kenya. Our results do not point to a single ecological driver of variation in species composition. Interspecific competition does not appear to be a major driver of species segregation in small forest patches, while its relative importance appears to be higher in larger ones, which may be indicative for a generic shift from competition-dominated to colonisation-driven community structure with decreasing fragment size. Functional trait diversity was independent of fragment size after controlling for species richness. As fragmentation effects vary among feeding guilds and habitat generalists, in particular, tend to decline in low quality forest patches, we plead for taking species ecology fully into account when predicting tropical community responses to habitat change.

Eco-evolutionary Model of Rapid Phenotypic Diversification in Species-Rich Communities

Evolutionary and ecosystem dynamics are often treated as different processes –operating at separate timescales– even if evidence reveals that rapid evolutionary changes can feed back into ecological interactions. A recent long-term field experiment has explicitly shown that communities of competing plant species can experience very fast phenotypic diversification, and that this gives rise to enhanced complementarity in resource exploitation and to enlarged ecosystem-level productivity. Here, we build on progress made in recent years in the integration of eco-evolutionary dynamics, and present a computational approach aimed at describing these empirical findings in detail. In particular we model a community of organisms of different but similar species evolving in time through mechanisms of birth, competition, sexual reproduction, descent with modification, and death. Based on simple rules, this model provides a rationalization for the emergence of rapid phenotypic diversification in species-rich communities. Furthermore, it also leads to non-trivial predictions about long-term phenotypic change and ecological interactions. Our results illustrate that the presence of highly specialized, non-competing species leads to very stable communities and reveals that phenotypically equivalent species occupying the same niche may emerge and coexist for very long times. Thus, the framework presented here provides a simple approach –complementing existing theories, but specifically devised to account for the specificities of the recent empirical findings for plant communities– to explain the collective emergence of diversification at a community level, and paves the way to further scrutinize the intimate entanglement of ecological and evolutionary processes, especially in species-rich communities.

Population ecology and evolutionary biology have been traditionally studied as separate disciplines, even if feedbacks between community and evolutionary processes are known to exist, having been empirically characterized in recent years in different types of communities (from microbes to plants and vertebrates), and theoretically analyzed with novel and powerful mathematical tools. Recent long-term field experiments with plants have proven that rapid co-evolution and diversification of species traits results in an overall enhancement of the ecosystem productivity, with important consequences for agriculture and conservation. Here, we propose a relatively simple computational eco-evolutionary model specifically devised to describe rapid phenotypic diversification in this type of species-rich communities. Our model captures the main phenomenology observed experimentally, and it also makes non-trivial predictions for long term phenotypic change and ecological interactions, such as the stable coexistence of highly specialized species or the possible emergence of phenotypically equivalent species occupying the same niche. Finally, the model is easily generalizable to analyze different eco-evolutionary problems within a relatively simple and unified computational framework.

Species coexistence in a changing world

The consequences of global change for the maintenance of species diversity will depend on the sum of each species responses to the environment and on the interactions among them. A wide ecological literature supports that these species-specific responses can arise from factors related to life strategies, evolutionary history and intraspecific variation, and also from environmental variation in space and time. In the light of recent advances from coexistence theory combined with mechanistic explanations of diversity maintenance, we discuss how global change drivers can influence species coexistence. We revise the importance of both competition and facilitation for understanding coexistence in different ecosystems, address the influence of phylogenetic relatedness, functional traits, phenotypic plasticity and intraspecific variability, and discuss lessons learnt from invasion ecology. While most previous studies have focused their efforts on disentangling the mechanisms that maintain the biological diversity in species-rich ecosystems such as tropical forests, grasslands and coral reefs, we argue that much can be learnt from pauci-specific communities where functional variability within each species, together with demographic and stochastic processes becomes key to understand species interactions and eventually community responses to global change.

Species colonisation, not competitive exclusion, drives community overdispersion over long-term succession

Ecological communities often transition from phylogenetic and functional clustering to overdispersion over succession as judged by space-for-time substitution studies. Such a pattern has been generally attributed to the increase in competitive exclusion of closely related species with similar traits through time, although colonisation and extinction have rarely been examined. Using 44 years of uninterrupted old-field succession in New Jersey, USA, we confirmed that phylogenetic and functional clustering decreased as succession unfolded, but the transition was largely driven by colonisation. Early colonists were closely related and functionally similar to residents, while later colonists became less similar to the species present. Extirpated species were generally more distantly related to residents than by chance, or exhibited random phylogenetic/functional patterns, and their relatedness to residents was not associated with time. These results provide direct evidence that the colonisation of distant relatives, rather than extinction of close relatives, drives phylogenetic and functional overdispersion over succession.

Biodiversity enhances ecosystem multifunctionality across trophic levels and habitats

The importance of biodiversity for the integrated functioning of ecosystems remains unclear because most evidence comes from analyses of biodiversity's effect on individual functions. Here we show that the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem function become more important as more functions are considered. We present the first systematic investigation of biodiversity's effect on ecosystem multifunctionality across multiple taxa, trophic levels and habitats using a comprehensive database of 94 manipulations of species richness. We show that species-rich communities maintained multiple functions at higher levels than depauperate ones. These effects were stronger for herbivore biodiversity than for plant biodiversity, and were remarkably consistent across aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Despite observed tradeoffs, the overall effect of biodiversity on multifunctionality grew stronger as more functions were considered. These results indicate that prior research has underestimated the importance of biodiversity for ecosystem functioning by focusing on individual functions and taxonomic groups.

The influence of biodiversity on multiple ecosystem processes is not well understood. Analysing 94 biodiversity-ecosystem functioning experiments, Lefcheck et al. find that increased species richness maintains more ecological functions, across multiple taxa, trophic levels and habitats.

Different assembly processes drive shifts in species and functional composition in experimental grasslands varying in sown diversity and community history

BACKGROUND

The prevalence of different biotic processes (limiting similarity, weaker competitor exclusion) and historical contingency due to priority effects are in the focus of ongoing discussions about community assembly and non-random functional trait distributions.

METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS

We experimentally manipulated assembly history in a grassland biodiversity experiment (Jena Experiment) by applying two factorially crossed split-plot treatments to all communities: (i) duration of weeding (never weeded since sowing or cessation of weeding after 3 or 6 years); (ii) seed addition (control vs. seed addition 4 years after sowing). Spontaneous colonization of new species in the control treatment without seed addition increased realized species richness and functional richness (FRic), indicating continuously denser packing of niches. Seed addition resulted in forced colonization and increased realized species richness, FRic, functional evenness (FEve) and functional divergence (FDiv), i.e. higher abundances of species with extreme trait values. Furthermore, the colonization of new species led to a decline in FEve through time, suggesting that weaker competitors were reduced in abundance or excluded. Communities with higher initial species richness or with longer time since cessation of weeding were more restricted in the entry of new species and showed smaller increases in FRic after seed addition than other communities. The two assembly-history treatments caused a divergence of species compositions within communities originally established with the same species. Communities originally established with different species converged in species richness and functional trait composition over time, but remained more distinct in species composition.

CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE

Contrasting biotic processes (limiting similarity, weaker competitor exclusion) increase functional convergence between communities initially established with different species. Historical contingency with regard to realized species compositions could not be eradicated by cessation of weeding or forced colonization and was still detectable 5 years after application of these treatments, providing evidence for the role of priority effects in community assembly.

Small-scale spatial variability in phylogenetic community structure during early plant succession depends on soil properties

During early plant succession, the phylogenetic structure of a community changes in response to important environmental filters and emerging species interactions. We traced the development of temperate-zone plant communities during the first 7 years of primary succession on catchment soils to explore patterns of initial species assembly. We found pronounced small-scale differences in the phylogenetic composition of neighbouring plant assemblages and a large-scale trend towards phylogenetic evenness. This small-scale variability appears to be mediated by soil properties, particularly carbonate content. Therefore, abiotic environmental conditions might counteract or even supersede the effects of interspecific competition among closely related species, which are usually predicted to exhibit patterns of phylogenetic evenness. We conclude that theories on phylogenetic community composition need to incorporate effects of small-scale variability of environmental factors.

Directional biases in phylogenetic structure quantification: a Mediterranean case study

Recent years have seen an increasing effort to incorporate phylogenetic hypotheses to the study of community assembly processes. The incorporation of such evolutionary information has been eased by the emergence of specialized software for the automatic estimation of partially resolved supertrees based on published phylogenies. Despite this growing interest in the use of phylogenies in ecological research, very few studies have attempted to quantify the potential biases related to the use of partially resolved phylogenies and to branch length accuracy, and no work has examined how tree shape may affect inference of community phylogenetic metrics. In this study, using a large plant community and elevational dataset, we tested the influence of phylogenetic resolution and branch length information on the quantification of phylogenetic structure; and also explored the impact of tree shape (stemminess) on the loss of accuracy in phylogenetic structure quantification due to phylogenetic resolution. For this purpose, we used 9 sets of phylogenetic hypotheses of varying resolution and branch lengths to calculate three indices of phylogenetic structure: the mean phylogenetic distance (NRI), the mean nearest taxon distance (NTI) and phylogenetic diversity (stdPD) metrics. The NRI metric was the less sensitive to phylogenetic resolution, stdPD showed an intermediate sensitivity, and NTI was the most sensitive one; NRI was also less sensitive to branch length accuracy than NTI and stdPD, the degree of sensitivity being strongly dependent on the dating method and the sample size. Directional biases were generally towards type II errors. Interestingly, we detected that tree shape influenced the accuracy loss derived from the lack of phylogenetic resolution, particularly for NRI and stdPD. We conclude that well-resolved molecular phylogenies with accurate branch length information are needed to identify the underlying phylogenetic structure of communities, and also that sensitivity of phylogenetic structure measures to low phylogenetic resolution can strongly differ depending on phylogenetic tree shape.

Plant Facilitation and Phylogenetics

The relationship between facilitation and evolutionary ecology is poorly understood. We review five issues elucidating how the phylogenetic relatedness of species provides insight into the role of facilitation in community assembly: (a) Are the facilitative interactions more common between species that differ in a regeneration niche? (b) Are facilitative interactions more common between distantly related species? (c) Do communities governed by facilitation (rather than competition) have higher phylogenetic diversity? (d) As facilitated juvenile plants mature, do they compete with their nurses more often if they are closely related to them? (e) How does the phylogenetic signature in a community reveal ecological processes, such as succession, regeneration dynamics, indirect interactions, and coextinction cascades? The evolutionary history of lineages explains the regeneration niche of species, which ultimately determines the facilitation-competition balance and therefore community assembly and dynamics. We apply this framework to the conservation of biodiversity and propose future research avenues.