Spatial mismatch in morphological, ecological and phylogenetic diversity, in historical and contemporary European freshwater fish faunas

Abstract

Biodiversity encompasses multiple facets, among which taxonomic, functional and phylogenetic aspects are the most often considered. Understanding how those diversity facets are distributed and what are their determinants has become a central concern in the current context of biodiversity crisis, but such multi‐faceted measures over large geographical areas are still pending. Here, we measured the congruence between the biogeographical patterns of freshwater fish morphological, ecological and phylogenetic diversity across Europe and identified the natural and anthropogenic drivers shaping those patterns. Based on freshwater fish occurrence records in 290 European river catchments, we computed richness and evenness for morphological, ecological and phylogenetic diversity using standardized effect sizes for each diversity index. We then used linear models including climatic, geo‐morphological, biotic and human‐related factors to determine the key drivers shaping freshwater fish biodiversity patterns across Europe. We found a weak spatial congruence between facets of diversity. Patterns of diversity were mainly driven by elevation range, climatic seasonality and species richness while other factors played a minor role. Finally, we found that non‐native species introductions significantly affected diversity patterns and influenced the effects of some environmental drivers. Morphological, ecological and phylogenetic diversity constitute complementary facets of fish diversity rather than surrogates, testifying that they deserve to be considered altogether to properly assess biodiversity. Although the same environmental and anthropogenic factors overall explained those diversity facets, their relative influence varied. In the current context of global change, non‐native species introductions may also lead to important reshuffling of assemblages resulting in profound changes of diversity patterns.

The Relationship Between Category Richness and Morphological Diversity in Jewel Beetles

“…Buprestinae has the same genus richness as Chrysochroinae, yet its number of test species was nearly 1/5 smaller than the latter (272). The taxa richness of Polycestinae showed a downward trend: it got a lower test genus richness (24) and species richness (128), and this pattern was also found in the statistical work of Julodinae (the genus richness and species richness was 82 and 6, respectively). In addition, the Galbellinae was found to exhibit the lowest species richness value (1) with only one genus included in the test sample.…”

“…According to the information contained in both morphological diversity and species richness, analysis of the relationship between these two indicators has been tested widely, and has been applied to most animal groups, from unicellular organisms to mammals, as well as many plant groups [6][7][8]. Most studies revealed that morphological diversity was positively correlated with species richness [9][10][11][12]. However, this documented relationship has not always been consistent because of variation in the niche and status of an organism in ecosystem [13,14], which reminds us that the relationship between these two indicators is not as simple as was initially thought.…”

“…For instance, a biodiversity research of leaf-litter ants has suggested that morphological diversity decreased with latitude while the trend of species richness was opposite [15]. While most authors have compared the morphological diversity and species richness of a particular community at a local scale [16][17][18][19][20][21][22], few studies have focused on the comparison of these different facets simultaneously at a large cosmopolitan scale (but see Safi et al 2011 andLucie et al 2018) [23,24]. Whether new data collection and data analysis approaches applied to a whole taxonomic category can also provide a positive insight into this correlation like it in the most specific community test is still unknown.…”

Morphological diversity of freshwater fishes differs between realms, but morphologically extreme species are widespread

“…Most global and regional scale studies have focused on the taxonomic facet, but the recent development of functional databases encompassing large numbers of species for plants (e.g., Díaz et al, 2016;Kattge et al, 2011) and animals (e.g., Mouillot et al, 2014;Ricklefs, 2012;Toussaint, Charpin, Brosse, & Villéger, 2016) allows the consideration of the functional dimensions of biodiversity at macroecological scales. Most of the previous studies have revealed a mismatch between taxonomic and functional dimensions of diversity (Kuczynski et al, 2018;Parravicini et al, 2014;Toussaint et al, 2016) because of a difference in trait distributions between realm faunas.…”

Relationships between species richness and morphological diversity: insight from a geometric morphometric analysis of scarabs

“…Most studies have revealed that morphological diversity is positively correlated with species richness in many groups (from unicellular organisms to most animal groups, plant, etc. ), which is presumed to re ect the in uence of phylogenetic factor [9][10][11][12]. However, if ecological factors are considered tests of the relation between morphological diversity and species richness have not always yielded consistent results [13][14][15].…”