Detecting the macroevolutionary signal of species interactions

Abstract

Species interactions lie at the heart of many theories of macroevolution, from adaptive radiation to the Red Queen. Although some theories describe the imprint that interactions will have over long timescales, we are still missing a comprehensive understanding of the effects of interactions on macroevolution. Current research shows strong evidence for the impact of interactions on macroevolutionary patterns of trait evolution and diversification, yet many macroevolutionary studies have only a tenuous relationship to ecological studies of interactions over shorter timescales. We review current research in this area, highlighting approaches that explicitly model species interactions and connect them to broad‐scale macroevolutionary patterns. We also suggest that progress has been made by taking an integrative interdisciplinary look at individual clades. We focus on African cichlids as a case study of how this approach can be fruitful. Overall, although the evidence for species interactions shaping macroevolution is strong, further work using integrative and model‐based approaches is needed to spur progress towards understanding the complex dynamics that structure communities over time and space.

On the mismatch in the strength of competition among fossil and modern species of planktonic Foraminifera

“…However, we found no evidence of interspecific competition shaping spatial or temporal diversity patterns of extant PF. The global and clade‐wide scales of our ecological analysis are comparable in scope to macroevolutionary analysis, yet these analyses differ markedly in temporal and taxonomic scales (Harmon et al ). The PF fossil record showed evidence for competition when analysed at the species level (taxon counts) over millions of years (Ezard & Purvis, ).…”

“…For example, positive interactions such as mutualism can have a negative effect on diversification, and negative interactions such as predation (for the prey) and parasitism (for the host) can enhance diversification (Jablonski, 2008a;Yoder & Nuismer, 2010). How individual-level interactions scale up to affect species' diversification remains a topic that has received scant attention (Jablonski, 2017), and we currently lack understanding of how congruent or discordant these effects are across ecological and geological time scales (Harmon et al 2019;Weber, Wagner, Best, Harmon, & Matthews, 2017).…”

Tempo and mode of morphological evolution are decoupled from latitude in birds

“…Disentangling these opposing effects is challenging in part because previous macroecological studies have generally been restricted to either relatively few traits or limited samples of species. In addition, progress has been impeded by the lack of suitable methods for detecting the impact of species interactions on trait evolution (Weber et al 2017;Harmon et al 2019). Recent developments make it possible to detect an impact of species interactions on phenotypic evolution in standard comparative analyses (Weir However, these developments have yet to be deployed in the context of latitudinal sampling and thus the key prediction of a latitudinal gradient in trait diversification has yet to be tested.…”

Macroevolutionary Stability Predicts Interaction Patterns of Species in Seed Dispersal Networks

“…However, most studies have focused on describing and understanding patterns and processes at ecological timescales. The few studies with broader temporal scales are either those investigating community phylogenetics (see Harmon et al 2019 and references therein), the potential association between diversification rates and diet, including those specialized in fruit (e.g. Burin et al 2016), the patterns of phylogenetic conservatism of specialization/generalization of interactions (Gómez et al 2010), or more broadly the effect of mutualisms on diversification rates in vertebrates (e.g.…”