A species' ecological niche depends on the species' adaptations to its present habitat, but also on the legacy from its ancestors. Most authors argue that such a phylogenetic niche conservatism is of minor importance, although no quantitative analyses across a major taxon is available. Higher plants from central Europe offer a unique opportunity for such an exercise, as the niche positions along various environmental gradients are available for most species. We quantified niche conservatism by two approaches. First, we used a phylogenetic tree and quantified the degree of retention of niches across the tree. Depending on the gradient, the values ranged from 0.43 to 0.22. This was significantly greater than the null expectation. Second, we used a taxonomy and quantified the amount of variance among species that could be explained at higher taxonomic levels. The values ranged from 25 to 72%. Again, this was significantly higher than the null expectation. Thus, both approaches indicated a clear niche conservatism. The distribution of conservatism across taxonomic levels differed considerably among environmental gradients. The differences among environmental gradients could be correlated with the palaeoenvironmental conditions during the radiation of the phylogenetic lineages. Thus, niche conservatism among extant plant species may reflect the opportunities of their ancestors during their diversification.
In the agricultural landscapes of Europe, the White Stork (Ciconia ciconia) prefers to forage on meadows with short vegetation. Thus, food supply for the nestlings and, consequently, breeding success of this central‐place forager depend on the temporal and spatial mowing activities of farmers around the nest to generate a patchy and dynamic food availability. Using a spatially explicit model, we study the impact of different land use patterns on food supply and breeding success of a central‐place forager. The conclusions of our model are twofold. First, for the White Stork, our model suggests that sequential (asynchronous) mowing increases breeding success compared to the synchronous mowing activities presently applied by farmers. Second and more generally, we conclude that, with increasing heterogeneity and dynamics of the landscape, the patch selection strategy becomes increasingly important for predicting food supply. Thus, landscape‐oriented behavior is an important, but often neglected, component of conservation biology and management, especially in agricultural landscapes.
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