Aim To inve stigate geographical patterns of phylogenetic beta diversity (PBD) and its turnover and nestedness-resultant components for terrestrial mammals. We expect an increase in the importance of the nestedness-resultant component towards temperate regions given the historical loss of lineages caused by environmental and spatial constraints. Analogously, we expect to find a similar increase in the contribution of the nestedness-resultant component towards higher elevations. We expect these patterns to be stronger for Rodentia because they have poor dispersal ability and may have been less efficient in recolonizing areas after glaciations.Location World-wide.Methods We generated the species composition of terrestrial Mammalia for 200 km 3 200 km cells to calculate PBD and its turnover and nestednessresultant components. All measures were computed for each cell and the cells in the surrounding radius of one, two or three adjacent layers. We calculated the relative importance of the nestedness-resultant component as the proportion of the total PBD (PBD ratio ) and also PBD deviation given taxonomic beta diversity (PBD dev ). PBD dev measures the importance of phylogenetic beta diversity after factoring out taxonomic beta diversity. We used simple linear regressions and piecewise regressions to investigate relationships between PBD ratio and mean annual temperature and elevation. ResultsWe found a major contribution of the nestedness-resultant component linked to temperate climate, especially for groups with better dispersal capacity. Higher elevations were associated with a major contribution of the turnoverresultant component, particularly for Rodentia. Main conclusionsWe provide the first global representation of PBD in terrestrial mammals and demonstrate that at higher latitudes PBD is mostly a result of lineage loss, whereas in highlands it is linked to lineage turnover. By analysing global patterns of the contribution of PBD components, we demonstrate that dispersal capacity is essential in determining the response of different lineages to geographical and environmental barriers.

Aim Bats are commonly considered in the literature as an example of strong niche conservatism. However, no specific tests have been conducted to investigate the extent to which bat species niches are evolutionarily conserved. We address this question at different phylogenetic scales using phylogenetic and geographical approaches. Location Global. Methods We used nine climatic variables to describe a multivariate representation of bat climatic niches. We measured niche position, niche breadth and niche overlap between sister species pairs. We performed a Mantel test to verify whether niche overlap was related to phylogenetic distance among species. We also tested for phylogenetic signal and compared the relative fit of evolutionary models with the observed variation of niche features. Results Niche overlap and phylogenetic distances were not related. At deeper evolutionary scales, we found evidence that climatic niche evolved more slowly than expected under a Brownian motion model. This indicates phylogenetic conservatism, particularly for niche position of Vespertilionidae and Molossidae. Main conclusions We found evidence of phylogenetic niche conservatism at the order and family levels but not at the species level. Evolution of climatic niches is non‐stationary across the order Chiroptera, consistent with the different histories of clades. We stress the importance of taking into account the method of choice, the niche feature and the phylogenetic scale being evaluated when testing for phylogenetic niche conservatism at higher taxonomic levels and its influence on biodiversity gradients.

BackgroundDiversity patterns result from ecological to evolutionary processes operating at different spatial and temporal scales. Species trait variation determine the spatial scales at which organisms perceive the environment. Despite this knowledge, the coupling of all these factors to understand how diversity is structured is still deficient. Here, we review the role of ecological and evolutionary processes operating across different hierarchically spatial scales to shape diversity patterns of bats—the second largest mammal order and the only mammals with real flight capability.Main bodyWe observed that flight development and its provision of increased dispersal ability influenced the diversification, life history, geographic distribution, and local interspecific interactions of bats, differently across multiple spatial scales. Niche packing combined with different flight, foraging and echolocation strategies and differential use of air space allowed the coexistence among bats as well as for an increased diversity supported by the environment. Considering distinct bat species distributions across space due to their functional characteristics, we assert that understanding such characteristics in Chiroptera improves the knowledge on ecological processes at different scales. We also point two main knowledge gaps that limit progress on the knowledge on scale-dependence of ecological and evolutionary processes in bats: a geographical bias, showing that research on bats is mainly done in the New World; and the lack of studies addressing the mesoscale (i.e. landscape and metacommunity scales).ConclusionsWe propose that it is essential to couple spatial scales and different zoogeographical regions along with their functional traits, to address bat diversity patterns and understand how they are distributed across the environment. Understanding how bats perceive space is a complex task: all bats can fly, but their perception of space varies with their biological traits.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12898-018-0174-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Aim To investigate global patterns of phylogenetic beta diversity (phylobetadiversity, PBD) components in bats (Chiroptera), testing whether the strong dispersal barriers among realms led to lineage differentiation between them and whether the flight capability of the study group created distance-decay patterns in PBD, with lower turnover rates between the closest biogeographical regions.Location Global, delimited by biogeographical regions.Methods Using the global distribution of bats and a supertree available for most species, we calculated PBD using the complement of the PhyloSor index. In addition, to distinguish the relative roles of local (e.g. lineage filtering) and regional processes (e.g. speciation) in shaping broad-scale patterns of PBD, we partitioned PBD into two components: the turnover component (PBD Turn ) and the phylogenetic diversity (PD) component (PBD PD ). We used a null model to test whether assemblages were more or less phylogenetically dissimilar than expected by chance. We also performed a Mantel analysis to analyse the distance-decay patterns of PBD and its two components.Results The most striking difference in PBD was found between the Old World and the New World. In general, the PBD pattern was determined by PBD Turn . For some adjacent regions we noticed the PBD PD component was more important, indicating that the dissimilarity was mostly due to differences in phylogenetic diversity. On the other hand, for other adjacent regions, the observed PBD Turn was higher than expected by chance and the PBD PD was lower. This demonstrates that, although these regions are relatively close in space, there are other factors driving phylogenetic differences between them (i.e. ecological factors).Main conclusions Our results suggest that at broad scales, the PBD of bats is determined by PBD Turn . We postulate that the flight ability of bats led to low turnover rates between adjacent regions in the absence of other factors that can drive differences between them (e.g. strong environmental barriers).

ABSTRACT. We isolated and characterized 12 microsatellite loci for Tibouchina papyrus (Melastomataceae), an endangered species with narrow and disjunct range, endemics to a few localities in "cerrado rupestre" from Central Brazil. These microsatellites were obtained by sequencing of a genomic shotgun library for primer design. Leaves from 96 individuals collected in the three known local populations were genotyped using the 12 primers designed to analyze the polymorphisms at each locus. The number of alleles per locus ranged from one to six; two loci were monomorphic. Among the polymorphic loci, expected heterozygosities ranged from 0.161 to 0.714. Combined paternity exclusion probability was 0.957 and combined genetic identity (0.051) was high for studies on parentage. Tibouchina papyrus is a rare and endemic tree species of outcrop quartzite and sandstone soils, with highly isolated populations, which may have lead to the low degree of polymorphism that we detected. Also, motifs of most loci are larger than dinucleotide, which typically display lower levels of polymorphism.