Phylogenetic structure of lichen metacommunities in Amazonian and Northeast Brazil

Abstract

Amazon, Atlantic forest, Brejos de Altitude, Caatinga, Carrasco, Cerradão and Restinga are major vegetation units in North and Northeast Brazil. Little is known about lichen metacommunity structure in these habitats. While species richness and composition generally depend on climatic factors, in azonal vegetation edaphic factors may have a filtering effect on tree bark structure and hence the composition of epiphytic lichen communities. We hypothesized that climatic stress and a tree bark filtering effect would result in reduced richness and phylogenetic clustering in Caatinga, Carrasco, Cerradão and Restinga, whereas high richness and phylogenetic overdispersion were predicted for Amazon and Atlantic Forest. To test this, we analyzed 2,090 lichenized species in the study area, with a supertree to assess phylogenetic metacommunity structure. Amazon and Atlantic forest exhibited high richness and phylogenetic diversity, with phylogenetic overdispersion only in the Amazon. The zonal Caatinga with drought stress and the extrazonal Brejos both exhibited phylogenetic clustering. Among the azonal, edaphic vegetation units, Cerradão exhibited phylogenetic overdispersion, whereas Restinga showed phylogenetic clustering. Nearest taxon phylogenetic distance indicated a close relationship between Amazon and Atlantic forest, Atlantic forest and Brejos and Atlantic forest and Caatinga. Carrasco was mostly closely related to Cerradão, and Restinga was distantly related to any other unit. These findings indicate more complex patterns in the phylogenetic structure of lichen metacommunities, partly reflecting those of plant metacommunities, as a result of concurrent macroecological evolutionary histories. Our data supported floristic evidence that Carrasco is part of the Cerrado complex and not related to Caatinga.

Nuanced qualitative trait approaches reveal environmental filtering and phylogenetic constraints on lichen communities

“…Based on the list of sampled lichen species, we generated a phylogenetic supertree, following Lücking et al (2017) and Nascimento et al (2021) for higher levels of classification and family-level treatments for lower levels (see Appendix S1: Figure S1 for more details and references). The tree was fully resolved to genus level and partially to species level, depending on published phylogenies, a reliable method for this type of study (Li et al, 2019).…”

“…Tropical forests are global hotspots of biodiversity and therefore of great ecological relevance for the maintenance of world diversity and necessary for the sustainability of essential global processes, such as climate regulation (Brockerhoff et al, 2017; Marques & Grelle, 2021; Myers et al, 2000). Lichens are an important element of forest ecosystems (Asplund & Wardle, 2014), and forest structure influences the taxonomic (Dymytrova et al, 2018; Li et al, 2011) and functional composition (Aragón et al, 2019; Benítez et al, 2018; Koch et al, 2013), besides the phylogenetic diversity of epiphytic lichen communities (Nascimento et al, 2021; Hurtado et al, 2019). It has been shown that during succession in evergreen tropical forests, initial stages have higher light incidence in the understory than later stages, due to a progressive increase in tree density, biomass, and structural complexity across forest regeneration (Guariguata & Ostertag, 2001; Poorter et al, 2016; Rozendaal et al, 2019; Zanini et al, 2014).…”

Lichens from the Colombian Amazon: 666 Taxa Including 28 new Species and 157 New Country Records Document an Extraordinary Diversity

“…Discussion. This species was originally presumed to be paleotropical, previously reported from New Caledonia and India but has since then reported from Brazil (Menezes et al 2018;Nascimento et al 2021) and is here for the first time reported from Colombia. We could not find any conceivable differences between the Colombian specimens and the type material of Trypethelium annulare var.…”

Lichen Community Assemblages and Functional Traits as Indicators of Vegetation Types in Central Mexico, Based on Herbarium Specimens

“…Lichen soft functional traits and phylogenetic structure of lichen communities show similar patterns, allowing to evaluate ecological interactions and the evolutionary meaning of those assemblages (Prieto et al 2017; Hurtado et al 2019). That congruence highlights the importance of local and regional inventories in making ecosystem conservation decisions (Nascimento et al 2021), as well as the implications of functional diversity parameters and phylogenetic dispersion on the vulnerability of ecosystem services (Koch et al 2013; Soto-Medina et al 2019). The interpretation of lichen ecological phenomena using a functional trait approach, provides advantages to the non-specialists in lichen taxonomy and offers the appropriate tools to comprehend how traits have an important role on lichen community structure and dynamics (Benítez et al 2018; Ellis et al 2021).…”