Is Phylogeny More Useful than Functional Traits for Assessing Diversity Patterns Under Community Assembly Processes?

Abstract

Phylogenetic and functional diversities and their relationship are important for understanding community assembly, which relates to forest sustainability. Thus, both diversities have been used in ecological studies evaluating community responses to environmental changes. However, it is unclear whether these diversity measures can uncover the actual community assembly processes. Herein, we examined their utility to assess such assembly processes by analyzing similarities in phylogenetic, functional, and taxonomic α- and β-diversities along an elevational gradient. Additionally, we examined the relationships among environment, phylogeny, and functional traits within the community. Based on our results, we evaluated whether phylogenetic or functional diversity could better reveal the actual community assembly processes. We found that taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional α-diversities were correlated with one another. Although the functional α-diversity showed a linear correlation with the elevational gradient, taxonomic and phylogenetic α-diversities showed unimodal patterns. Both phylogenetic and functional β-diversities correlated with taxonomic β-diversity, but there was no significant relationship between the former. Overall, our results evidenced that phylogenetic diversity and taxonomic diversity showed similar patterns, whereas functional diversity showed a relatively independent pattern, which may be due to limitations in the functional trait dimensions used in the present study. Although it is difficult to unravel whether the environment shapes phylogeny or functional traits within a community, phylogenetic diversity is a good proxy for assessing the assembly processes, whereas functional diversity may improve knowledge on the community by maximizing information about the functional trait dimensions.

Relationship of species diversity between overstory trees and understory herbs along the environmental gradients in the Tianshan Wild Fruit Forests, Northwest China

“…In the TWFF, tree species diversity was found to be unimodal with increasing elevation (Figs. 4g-l), supporting previous studies in Himalaya Mountains and temperate forests in Taibai, Taishan, and Laoshan mountains in China (Acharya et al, 2011;Zhang et al, 2016;Xu et al, 2019). However, the unimodal pattern of herb species diversity was in contrast to the negative and U-shaped pattern found in Taishan and Laoshan mountains (Zhang et al, 2016).…”

Supporting Bees in Cities: How Bees Are Influenced by Local and Landscape Features

“…Although many studies tend to focus on functional trait homogenization, recent work has investigated similarities from an evolutionary perspective [ 130 , 131 ]. Phylogenetic diversity may be correlated with functional traits; phylogenetic diversity changes may be more useful than functional trait changes in more accurately reflecting taxonomic changes within a community [ 130 , 132 ]. Phylogenetic studies in conjunction with functional trait studies may also be additionally useful in further determining vulnerable urban species within urban environments [ 133 ].…”

Habitat Models of Focal Species Can Link Ecology and Decision-Making in Sustainable Forest Management

“…A reason for the former is that the environmental impact research in freshwater and soil domains has traditionally focused on assemblages and taxon groups (including functional groups), not individual species [218][219][220]. Ecological analyses might reconsider whether group-level treatment is always justified for management [218,221,222], given that red-listing of species-an important part of the focal-species scheme (Figure 1)-has become an accepted formal tool. Inconspicuous species are gaining official protection in those jurisdictions that prioritize conservation status over public awareness.…”