Abstract
Phytoplankton species traits have been used to successfully predict the outcome of competition, but these traits are notoriously laborious to measure. If these traits display a phylogenetic signal, phylogenetic distance (PD) can be used as a proxy for trait variation. We provide the first investigation of the degree of phylogenetic signal in traits related to competition in freshwater green phytoplankton. We measured 17 traits related to competition and tested whether they displayed a phylogenetic signal across a molecular phylogeny of 59 species of green algae. We also assessed the fit of five models of trait evolution to trait variation across the phylogeny. There was no significant phylogenetic signal for 13 out of 17 ecological traits. For 7 traits, a non-phylogenetic model provided the best fit. For another 7 traits, a phylogenetic model was selected, but parameter values indicated that trait variation evolved recently, diminishing the importance of common ancestry. This study suggests that traits related to competition in freshwater green algae are not generally well-predicted by patterns of common ancestry. We discuss the mechanisms by which the link between phylogenetic distance and phenotypic differentiation may be broken.
Highlights
Phylogenetics has recently been integrated with community ecology to ask whether common ancestry between species, measured as their phylogenetic distance, can help explain phenomena ranging from community assembly [1,2,3,4], species invasions [5], priority effects [6], and biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships [7,8,9,10]
There was a marginally non-significant phylogenetic signal for %C ( K = 0.401 is lower than K = 1 expected for a Brownian Motion random walk)
Our data do not lend much support to the hypothesis that ecological traits related to competition in freshwater green algae are related to the phylogenetic placements of species on the tree of life
Summary
Phylogenetics has recently been integrated with community ecology to ask whether common ancestry between species, measured as their phylogenetic distance, can help explain phenomena ranging from community assembly [1,2,3,4], species invasions [5], priority effects [6], and biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships [7,8,9,10]. The desire to incorporate phylogenetics into community ecology has been based on many factors. The increased accessibility of genetic sequence data has made the construction of molecular phylogenies more feasible. The availability of molecular phylogenies has made it possible to rigorously test some old and popular hypotheses, many originated by Darwin, about how species' relatedness should impact the strength of species interactions [3, 4, 11, 12]. The possibility that phylogenetic relationships among species could be used to predict processes and patterns in community.
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