Phylogenetic diversity promotes ecosystem stability

Abstract

Abstract. Ecosystem stability in variable environments depends on the diversity of form and function of the constituent species. Species phenotypes and ecologies are the product of evolution, and the evolutionary history represented by co-occurring species has been shown to be an important predictor of ecosystem function. If phylogenetic distance is a surrogate for ecological differences, then greater evolutionary diversity should buffer ecosystems against environmental variation and result in greater ecosystem stability. We calculated both abundance-weighted and unweighted phylogenetic measures of plant community diversity for a long-term biodiversity-ecosystem function experiment at Cedar Creek, Minnesota, USA. We calculated a detrended measure of stability in aboveground biomass production in experimental plots and showed that phylogenetic relatedness explained variation in stability. Our results indicate that communities where species are evenly and distantly related to one another are more stable compared to communities where phylogenetic relationships are more clumped. This result could be explained by a phylogenetic sampling effect, where some lineages show greater stability in productivity compared to other lineages, and greater evolutionary distances reduce the chance of sampling only unstable groups. However, we failed to find evidence for similar stabilities among closely related species. Alternatively, we found evidence that plot biomass variance declined with increasing phylogenetic distances, and greater evolutionary distances may represent species that are ecologically different (phylogenetic complementarity). Accounting for evolutionary relationships can reveal how diversity in form and function may affect stability.

Tree phylogenetic diversity promotes host–parasitoid interactions

“…This indicates independent statistical effects of species richness and phylogeny, and that the diversity of evolutionary lineages is more important than species richness alone, despite the weakly positive relationship between both measures of diversity. Our results support the accumulating evidence that a plant community's PD is a strong predictor for the strength of ecosystem processes in that community [20,49]. For example, Parker et al [50] demonstrated that the susceptibility of a plant species to diseases and invasion potential (via escape from diseases) is predicted well by the PD of the surrounding plant community.…”

Phylogenetic measures of biodiversity and neo- and paleo-endemism in Australian Acacia

“…Phylogenetic measures of biodiversity were pioneered by Faith 11 , who developed the concept of phylogenetic diversity (PD), which has been increasingly explored in recent years [12][13][14][15] . Faith et al 12 and Rosauer et al 16 then established phylogenetic concepts of endemism.…”

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“…In this study, we showed that while PDss is strongly correlated with SR (see also Forest et al, 2007;Cadotte et al, 2012), communities can vary greatly in their deviation from expected PD given SR, as measured by ses.PDss. While communities in the central and western Amazon have the greatest tree species richness in the basin (ter Steege et al, 2003), the central Amazon shows much lower phylogenetic diversity than expected given its species richness (ses.PDss) compared to the western Amazon (Fig.…”