A phylogenetic perspective on the distribution of plant diversity

Abstract

Phylogenetic studies are revealing that major ecological niches are more conserved through evolutionary history than expected, implying that adaptations to major climate changes have not readily been accomplished in all lineages. Phylogenetic niche conservatism has important consequences for the assembly of both local communities and the regional species pools from which these are drawn. If corridors for movement are available, newly emerging environments will tend to be filled by species that filter in from areas in which the relevant adaptations have already evolved, as opposed to being filled by in situ evolution of these adaptations. Examples include intercontinental disjunctions of tropical plants, the spread of plant lineages around the Northern Hemisphere after the evolution of cold tolerance, and the radiation of northern alpine plants into the Andes. These observations highlight the role of phylogenetic knowledge and historical biogeography in explanations of global biodiversity patterns. They also have implications for the future of biodiversity.biodiversity ͉ niche conservatism ͉ community assembly ͉ historical biogeography ͉ climate change

Life history influences rates of climatic niche evolution in flowering plants

“…Wiens & Donoghue 2004;Wiens & Graham 2005;Donoghue 2008). The theory of niche conservatism suggests that closely related species tend to exhibit very similar habitat requirements, implying that speciation does not necessarily result in evolutionary shifts across niche dimensions (Wiens 2004;Wiens & Graham 2005;Kozak & Wiens 2006).…”

Advances, challenges and a developing synthesis of ecological community assembly theory

“…(i) Functional traits are the currency of assembly, just as phenotype is the currency of selection [18,32,33]. (ii) Species traits are essentially fixed because trait evolution proceeds more slowly than community assembly [34,35] and speciation usually takes several orders of magnitude longer than competitive exclusion [36]. (iii) There is greater trait variation among species than within species, while also recognizing that many species have similar traits.…”

A review on research advances, issues, and perspectives of morels

“…When the two Clades began to diversify in the late Cretaceous (Du et al 2012a), both temperate deciduous biome and coniferous biome were well established in the northern hemisphere (Axelrod 1960), so these niches have probably been conserved for the past 100 million years. Phylogenetic niche conservation (PNC, Donoghue 2008) in Morchella has been speculated to persist throughout its evolutionary history (Du et al 2012a). …”