Is phylogeography helpful for invasive species risk assessment? The case study of the bark beetle genus Dendroctonus

Abstract

Despite evidence that conspecific lineages may display different climatic tolerances, most invasion risk assessment tools are calibrated without considering phylogeographic information. This study aims to investigate the existence of intraspecific niche divergence within a group of insect pests and to explore how the inclusion of phylogeographic information into species distribution models may alter the estimation of the potential distribution of a species. We studied North American bark beetles belonging to the genus Dendroctonus, a group of pests of conifers that are listed as quarantine species in numerous countries. Most Dendroctonus species exhibit strong genetic divergence that appears to be geographically structured and shaped by historical events and biotic factors. We modeled all lineage distributions within five species, using MaxEnt and Boosted Regression Trees, and compared the results with the models fitted at the species scale. Multivariate analysis and niche similarity and equivalency tests were additionally performed to investigate the existence and magnitude of climatic niche divergence between conspecific lineages. We also tested the ability of lineage‐based models to predict the region invaded by D. valens in China. Conspecific lineages showed a climatic niche more similar than expected by chance, but displayed different climatic envelopes in their native range and, consequently, different estimates of potential distributions. We also observed that classical models calibrated using the entire range of the species could potentially under‐ or overestimate the potential range of the species when compared to a global prediction built by aggregating lineage‐based projections. This study showed that the invasive phylogeographic lineage of D. valens has invaded regions characterized by climatic conditions highly similar to those encountered in its native range suggesting that preadaptations to environment might have played a role in this invasion. This study highlights how our perception of the invasion risk of pests may be altered when integrating phylogeographic information.

Genetic and genomic evidence of niche partitioning and adaptive radiation in mountain pine beetle fungal symbionts

“…; Godefroid et al . ). To remove collinearity among these climatic variables and with altitude, longitude and latitude, we applied a principal components analysis (PCA) that reduced the data set to three main principal components retaining 93.0% of the original variation (Table S3, Supporting information).…”

Climate constrains range expansion of an allochronic population of the pine processionary moth

“…There is increasing evidence that intraspecific diversity should be accounted for when the potential distribution of species is predicted for purposes of conservation or pest management. Disregarding the potentially different responses of genetically divergent populations to environmental conditions may lead to inefficient biodiversity management plans (Benito Garz on et al, 2011;D'Amen et al, 2013) or invasion risk assessments (Peterson & Holt, 2003;Rey et al, 2012;Godefroid et al, 2015Godefroid et al, , 2016. Allochronic speciation is an increasingly documented important driver of intraspecific differentiation in several groups of organisms (Miyatake et al, 2002;Abbot & Withgott, 2004;Yamamoto & Sota, 2009).…”

Molecular ecology of insect pests of agricultural importance: the case of aphids

“…Species distribution modelling (SDM) is increasingly being used to map the ranges of pest insects (e.g. Aragon et al ., , ; Aragon & Lobo, ; Macfadyen & Kriticos, ; Kriticos et al ., ; Godefroid et al ., ; Kumar et al ., ). As mentioned above, these models define the realised niche of species and by delineating the potential areas that have the required environmental conditions to maintain viable populations, they can be used to identify the areas under risk of invasion under present climatic conditions (e.g.…”