The niche of higher plants: evidence for phylogenetic conservatism

Abstract

A species' ecological niche depends on the species' adaptations to its present habitat, but also on the legacy from its ancestors. Most authors argue that such a phylogenetic niche conservatism is of minor importance, although no quantitative analyses across a major taxon is available. Higher plants from central Europe offer a unique opportunity for such an exercise, as the niche positions along various environmental gradients are available for most species. We quantified niche conservatism by two approaches. First, we used a phylogenetic tree and quantified the degree of retention of niches across the tree. Depending on the gradient, the values ranged from 0.43 to 0.22. This was significantly greater than the null expectation. Second, we used a taxonomy and quantified the amount of variance among species that could be explained at higher taxonomic levels. The values ranged from 25 to 72%. Again, this was significantly higher than the null expectation. Thus, both approaches indicated a clear niche conservatism. The distribution of conservatism across taxonomic levels differed considerably among environmental gradients. The differences among environmental gradients could be correlated with the palaeoenvironmental conditions during the radiation of the phylogenetic lineages. Thus, niche conservatism among extant plant species may reflect the opportunities of their ancestors during their diversification.

Phylogenetic trait conservatism and the evolution of functional trade-offs in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi

“…Shading of points, lines and significance levels refer to the family-level affiliation of the nodes where contrasts were calculated (light grey, Glomeraceae; dark grey, Gigasporaceae; black points refer to other nodes, black lines refer to the model fit including all points). (Prinzing et al 2001;Moles et al 2005;Swenson & Enquist 2007). The strong functional trait conservatism originating early in the ancient AM fungal lineage may be unique or possibly a common feature of microbial and/or asexual lineages, but these hypotheses still need to be tested.…”

“…Because functional traits contribute to the acquisition of resources and define the niches that organisms occupy, the process of character evolution can have strong implications for the assembly and functioning of ecosystems (Webb et al 2002;Wiens & Graham 2005;Cadotte et al 2008). Although it has long been recognized that closely related species share functional characteristics (Darwin 1859), broad patterns of trait evolution have only been recently quantified in plant and animal lineages (Peterson et al 1999;Prinzing et al 2001;Losos et al 2003;Cavender-Bares et al 2004;Swenson & Enquist 2007).…”

Phylogenetic signals in the realized climate niches of Chinese grasses (Poaceae)

“…For example, chloridoid node BI with widest divergence of temperature niche exhibits more geographic isolation than other chloridoid nodes, while panicoid node H with narrowest divergence of precipitation niche exhibits overlap with other panicoid nodes. The result indicates that NAD-ME/NADP-ME nodes display the phylogenetic signals in their climate niches (Prinzing et al 2001;Roalson 2008).…”

Microsatellite variation in three calcium-tolerant species of peat moss detected specific genotypes of Sphagnum warnstorfii on magnesium-rich bedrock

“…For vascular plants pH niche shifts are frequently recorded , perhaps because a switch-over between adaptation to acidic and calcareous substrates may not require a complicated reorganization of the genome (Tyler 2003). Phylogenetic analyses of vascular plants show that variance in species niche position along a pH gradient can be better explained at the level of species than at the levels of genera or family (Prinzing et al 2001).…”