Testing for changes in rate of evolution and position of the climatic niche of clades

Abstract

1.There is solid recognition that phylogenetic effects must be acknowledged to appreciate climatic niche variability among species clades properly. Yet, most currently available methods either work at the intra-specific level (hence they ignore phylogeny) or rely on the Brownian motion model of evolution to estimate phylogenetic effects on climatic niche variation. The Brownian motion model may be inappropriate to describe niche evolution in several cases, and even a significant phylogenetic signal in climatic variables does not indicate that the effect of shared ancestry was relevant to niche evolution. 2. We introduce a new phylogenetic comparative method which describes significant changes in the width and position of the climatic niche at the interspecific (clade) level, while making no a priori assumption about how niche evolution took place. 3. We devised the R function phylo.niche.shift to estimate whether the climatic niches of individual clades in the tree are either wider or narrower than expected, and whether the niche occupies unexpected climates. We tested phylo.niche.shift on realistic virtual species' distribution patterns applied to a phylogeny of 365 extant primate species. 4. We demonstrate via simulations that the new method is fast and accurate under widely different climatic niche evolution scenarios. phylo.niche.shift showed that the capuchin monkeys and langurs occupy much wider, and prosimian much narrower, climatic niche space than expected by their phylogenetic positions. 5. phylo.niche.shift may help to improve research on niche evolution by allowing researchers to test specific hypotheses on the factors affecting clades' realised niche width and position, and the potential effects of climate change on species' distributions.

The use of an integrated framework combining eco-evolutionary data and species distribution models to predict range shifts of species under changing climates

“…Significantly, the BM model assumes that niche evolution of species is gradual, which may oversimplify the process of niche evolution. This is an omission needs to be addressed, and some progress has been made [38] , which is also the direction for us to optimize our framework in the future.…”

Adding pattern and process to eco-evo theory and applications

“…Simply modeling how environmental change impacts heritable traits is only half of the story; our long-term goals must also include asking how these emergent genetic traits connect back to ecological dynamics [30,31]. Recognition of these concerns has led to the development of several powerful new methods and software applications [32][33][34][35].…”