Community phylogeny of the globally critically imperiled pine rockland ecosystem

Abstract

Community phylogenetic methods incorporate information on evolutionary relationships into studies of organismal assemblages. We used a community phylogenetic framework to investigate relationships and biogeographic affinities and to calculate phylogenetic signal of endemism and invasiveness for the flora of the pine rocklands-a globally critically imperiled ecosystem with a significant portion of its distribution in South Florida, United States. METHODS:We reconstructed phylogenetic relationships of 538 vascular plant taxa, which represent 92.28% of the vascular flora of the pine rocklands. We estimated phylogenetic signal for endemism and invasiveness using phylogenetic generalized linear mixed models. We determined the native range for each species in the data set and calculated the total number of species sourced from each region and all possible combinations of these regions. KEY RESULTS:The pine rockland flora includes representatives of all major vascular plant lineages, and most species have native ranges in the New World. There was strong phylogenetic signal for endemism, but not for invasiveness.CONCLUSIONS: Community phylogenetics has high potential value for conservation planning, particularly for fragmented and endangered ecosystems like the pine rockland. Strong phylogenetic signal for endemic species in our data set, which also tend to be threatened or endangered, can help to identify species at risk, as well as fragments where those species occur, highlighting conservation priorities. Our results indicate, at least in the pine rockland ecosystem, no phylogenetic signal for invasive species, and thus other information must be used to predict the potential for invasiveness.

Burrow Characteristics and Habitat Associations of Gopher Tortoises in Urban Pine Rockland Reserves (Miami, Florida, USA)

“…The pine rockland endemic Miami Tiger Beetle (Cicindelidia floridana) was undetected from 1934 until its rediscovery in 2007 (Brzoska et al, 2011) and is also now protected under the ESA (USFWS, 2016). Two butterfly species and more than ten pine rockland plant species have been added to the ESA since 2010 (Salvato, 2003;Possley et al, 2016;Trotta et al, 2018). A large and distinctive pine rockland trapdoor spider, Ummidia richmond, was only formally described in 2021, and is apparently also a south Florida endemic that occurs primarily in pine rocklands (Godwin and Bond, 2021).…”

“…The single dominant tree species, Pinus elliottii var densa, is endemic to south Florida. There is an understory dominated by palms (Serenoa repens, Sabal palmetto, and Cocothrinax argentata) and an extremely diverse understory plant community of grasses, herbs, and shrubs, which includes many endemics (O'Brien, 1998;Possley et al, 2008;Diamond and Heinen, 2016;Trotta et al, 2018). The pine rocklands require fire to maintain an open canopy.…”

The role of phylogenetic scale in Darwin's naturalization conundrum in the critically imperilled pine rockland ecosystem

“…We used the community phylogeny from Trotta et al. (2018) that includes 538 species from the pine rockland flora and represents 92.28% of the species present in this habitat type (Gann, 2019). This community phylogeny was estimated using sequences of the plastid loci rbcL , matK and psbA‐trnH generated from field collections, herbarium vouchers or sequence data from GenBank.…”

“…Currently, there are 106 species considered to be non‐indigenous found in the pine rockland flora (FLEPPC, 2017; Gann, 2019). Pine rocklands are ideal for testing the interactions of invasion impact, spatial scale and phylogenetic scale on DNC due the high diversity of indigenous and non‐indigenous species that have been robustly sampled and represented in a well‐resolved, species‐level community phylogeny (Trotta et al., 2018).…”

Effects of prescribed fire on soil properties in a pine rockland ecosystem

“…Pine rockland (PR) is a globally endangered sparse pine forest with a tropical herbaceous understory, adapted to periodic fire intervals of 6-9 yr (Jones et al, 2017). Historically occurring along the Miami Rock Ridge, from the eastern coast of South Florida to the Lower Florida Keys, only about 1.8% of the original 75,000 ha remains preserved in small patches outside of Everglades National Park (Possley, Maschinski, Maguire, & Guerra, 2014;Trotta et al, 2018). This ecosystem supports over 400 different species of native plants, 41 of which are exclusive to Florida and 25 that are exclusives to the PR ecosystem (Gann, 2018).…”