Contrasting patterns of phylogenetic diversity and alpine specialization across the alpine flora of the American mountain range system

Land use changes result in increased phylogenetic clustering and preferential loss of species-rich sites for Michigan floral assemblages.

“…We have previously published a species distribution model dataset for American seed plants (Figueroa et al 2021), suitable for biogeographic studies of diversity at regional and continental scales (Figueroa et al 2022). Brie y, this dataset was assembled by rst aggregating occurrence records from GBIF, and iDigBio.…”

“…Brie y, this dataset was assembled by rst aggregating occurrence records from GBIF, and iDigBio. Records were cleaned as described in (Figueroa et al 2021(Figueroa et al , 2022, and species with at least 12 occurrence records after data cleaning were passed on to MaxEnt (version 3.1.4; www.github.com/mrmaxent/Maxent; Phillips et al 2004Phillips et al , 2006 for distribution modeling. The following abiotic variables were used to build the models: from WorldClim (Fick and Hijmans 2017) we used Bioclim 1 (annual mean temperature), Bioclim 7 (temperature annual range), Bioclim 12 (annual precipitation) and Bioclim 17 (precipitation of driest quarter); from Soil Grids, we used sand content, soil organic carbon content, soil pH in water and coarse fragment volumetric percent; from GTOPO30 (https://doi.org/10.5066/F7DF6PQS), we used elevation.…”

“…Land use data can also highlight locations in which an occurrence record might be valid, but which do not represent a biological population from an ecological or conservation-centered approach (e.g., a backyard, small park, or some university campuses). Some of these issues might be dealt with by data-cleaning strategies (Figueroa et al 2022; Soltis and Soltis 2016; Grady et al in prep), however many of these procedures are not standardized, can vary considerably with the study's goals and area of interest (Zurell et al 2020), and data cleaning still does not explicitly address the issue of land use changes on predictions of biodiversity.…”

“…Often, a general goal of biodiversity mapping studies is to quantify metrics across large spatial scales. In doing so, areas of exceptional species richness (Soltis and Soltis 2016) or phylodiversity (Figueroa et al 2022;De Souza et al 2021) can be highlighted, and that information can be used subsequently to assist in biodiversity maintenance planning and assessment. And while some studies have incorporated land use types to compare species richness (e.g., Schuster et al 2019), and many studies have employed SDMs to identify biodiversity hotspots (e.g., Soltis and Soltis 2016), weaving together an SDM approach to compare biodiversity metrics with and without accounting for land use is less common, especially for phylodiversity metrics.…”

Plant evolutionary ecology in mountain regions in space and time

“…American mountain ranges have been the focus of multiple studies since Humboldt. Here, Figueroa et al (2021) present a global analysis of the distribution of 2937 native plants across the Andes, Sierras of Central America and mountain ranges of North America. They show that the diversity of alpine plants is highest in the Central Andes and western North America, and that assemblages with lower phylogenetic diversity contained species with a greater degree of alpine specialization.…”