Reconstructing historical shifts in suitable habitat of Sceloporus lineages using phylogenetic niche modelling

Abstract

Aim: We tested whether we could detect geographical shifts in modelled-suitable habitat. We aim to enhance phylogenetic niche models of past suitable habitats for Sceloporus lineages by integrating modern and fossil occurrences with ecological and phylogenetic comparative modelling methods. Specifically, we hypothesized that our integrated approach is sensitive enough to detect geographical shifts in suitable habitat between lineages and through evolutionary time. Location: North America. Taxon: Sceloporus lizards. Methods: We used extant and fossil occurrence data, general circulation models of palaeoclimate, climate envelope modelling and phylogenetic comparative methods to reconstruct past suitable climates for Sceloporus lizards over the last 20 million years, and then visualized the geographical locations of individual lineages using multivariate environmental similarity surfaces (MESS) maps. Results: We were able to reconstruct ancestral suitable climate for Sceloporus lineages with sufficient resolution to identify shifts in geographical location between lineages. We found that large shifts in climate regimes drove the expansion and contraction of suitable habitat through time. We found a positive association between tectonic events, like mountain uplift, and lineage diversification in the Sceloporus clade. Mountain uplift also facilitated the emergence of open grassland habitat, which excluded many Sceloporus species. Main conclusions: Our approach was sensitive enough to detect differences in geographical location of suitable habitat across lineages and through evolutionary time. Doing so is a critical first step to tracking the evolutionary ecology of individual taxa over long periods of evolutionary time, and to inferring which species co-existed in which locations. Such inferences would allow for more precise predictions of current and future ecological needs for conservation efforts, and to inform efforts to mitigate climate change.

Occurrence data uncover patterns of allopatric divergence and interspecies interactions in the evolutionary history of Sceloporus lizards

“…The undulatus clade seems to exemplify Rapoport's rule (Stevens, 1989) as the group is found at higher latitudes and species have exceptionally large ranges with only two widespread undulatus species occurring in the Southeast United States and two widespread undulates species occurring in the Midwest United States. The group seems to have migrated over large distances in a relatively short period of time (Rivera et al., 2020) with few speciation events occurring. Additionally, the group shows little phenotypic diversification (Leaché, 2009) with most species being medium in body size while only two species, S. woodi and S. virgatus , were small.…”

The geography of phylogenetic paleoecology: integrating data and methods to better understand biotic response to climate change

“…However, it is clear that more work is needed to better understand the evolution of physiological tolerances and how they relate to the climate space in which species occur. Rivera et al (2020) honed this framework to investigate lineage-specific differences among congeners. They showed that large shifts in the climate system drove expansion and contraction of suitable habitat and that geologic events, such as orogeny, relate to diversification events.…”

“…This allowed for more nuanced phylogenetic reconstruction of climate envelopes and more nuanced paleoclimate estimations between time periods where there are available global atmosphere and ocean circulation models reconstructing paleoclimate across geographic space. Second, PPGMs incorporated a method to include paleoclimate information associated with fossil localities into phylogenetic climate envelope reconstructions (Lawing et al 2016; Rivera et al 2020). If the paleoclimate information shows that a fossil occurred in a climate that is outside the distribution of current climates for a group under evaluation, then that information can improve our understanding of the evolution of climate envelopes and the paleobiogeographic reconstruction of species.…”

“…One way to deal with the unknown placement of a fossil occurrence within a phylogeny is to repeat a randomization procedure for its placement, perform a phylogenetic comparative analysis, evaluate the model, and extract important parameter estimates (Lawing et al 2016; Rivera et al 2020). After this procedure is repeated many times, a distribution of important parameter estimates is available for comparison to the original phylogenetic comparative method performed with no fossil occurrences included.…”

“…The discussion provided in this paper is not comprehensive in reviewing all studies that integrate modern and paleontological data and methods but will discuss several methods relevant to understanding how species and communities respond to climate and environmental change through time. I will frame the discussion focusing on P aleo P hylo G eographic species distribution M odels (PPGMs) as an organizing theme that integrates multiple lines of evidence to infer species past geographic response to climate change and to estimate where and when there were hotspots of ancient diversification (Lawing and Polly 2011; Rödder et al 2013; Lawing et al 2016; Rivera et al 2020). Using PPGMs as an organizing concept in this paper will allow me to home in on a few important methods that were integrated in this particular framework and is intended to help readers get basic information about how these methods work so they can think through how they might integrate multiple modeling techniques with heterogenous data types.…”