Back to Search
Start Over
Phylogenetic turnover along local environmental gradients in tropical forest communities
- Source :
- Oecologia. 182(2)
- Publication Year :
- 2014
-
Abstract
- While the importance of local-scale habitat niches in shaping tree species turnover along environmental gradients in tropical forests is well appreciated, relatively little is known about the influence of phylogenetic signal in species' habitat niches in shaping local community structure. We used detailed maps of the soil resource and topographic variation within eight 24-50 ha tropical forest plots combined with species phylogenies created from the APG III phylogeny to examine how phylogenetic beta diversity (indicating the degree of phylogenetic similarity of two communities) was related to environmental gradients within tropical tree communities. Using distance-based redundancy analysis we found that phylogenetic beta diversity, expressed as either nearest neighbor distance or mean pairwise distance, was significantly related to both soil and topographic variation in all study sites. In general, more phylogenetic beta diversity within a forest plot was explained by environmental variables this was expressed as nearest neighbor distance versus mean pairwise distance (3.0-10.3 % and 0.4-8.8 % of variation explained among plots, respectively), and more variation was explained by soil resource variables than topographic variables using either phylogenetic beta diversity metric. We also found that patterns of phylogenetic beta diversity expressed as nearest neighbor distance were consistent with previously observed patterns of niche similarity among congeneric species pairs in these plots. These results indicate the importance of phylogenetic signal in local habitat niches in shaping the phylogenetic structure of tropical tree communities, especially at the level of close phylogenetic neighbors, where similarity in habitat niches is most strongly preserved.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
Ecological niche
Tropical Climate
Phylogenetic tree
Ecology
Niche
Beta diversity
Biology
Forests
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
Trees
Phylogenetic diversity
Soil
Habitat
Similarity (network science)
Phylogenetics
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Ecosystem
Phylogeny
010606 plant biology & botany
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 14321939
- Volume :
- 182
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Oecologia
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....b6f3e1c5ba6880c1e11376d779d30ff6