Abstract

It has long been hypothesized that biotic interactions are important drivers of biodiversity evolution, yet such interactions have been relatively less studied than abiotic factors owing to the inherent complexity in and the number of types of such interactions. Amongst the most prominent of biotic interactions worldwide are those between plants and pollinators. In the Neotropics, the most biodiverse region on Earth, hummingbird and bee pollination have contributed substantially to plant fitness. Using comparative methods, we test the macroevolutionary consequences of bird and bee pollination within a species rich lineage of flowering plants: Ruellia. We additionally explore impacts of species occupancy of ever-wet rainforests vs. dry ecosystems including cerrado and seasonally dry tropical forests. We compared outcomes based on two different methods of model selection: a traditional approach that utilizes a series of transitive likelihood ratio tests as well as a weighted model averaging approach. Analyses yield evidence for increased net diversification rates among Neotropical Ruellia (compared to Paleotropical lineages) as well as among hummingbird-adapted species. In contrast, we recovered no evidence of higher diversification rates among either bee- or non-bee-adapted lineages and no evidence for higher rates among wet or dry habitat lineages. Understanding fully the factors that have contributed to biases in biodiversity across the planet will ultimately depend upon incorporating knowledge of biotic interactions as well as connecting microevolutionary processes to macroevolutionary patterns.

Highlights

  • Repeated observations in unrelated families of greater species richness in the Neotropics compared to the Paleotropics has yielded a classic pattern in plant biogeography [1,2]

  • Drivers of diversification in Ruellia aridification since the Miocene resulting in more severe contraction of rainforests and higher extinction in the Paleotropics compared to Neotropics and (b) uplift of the Andes in the Neogene followed by opportunistic niche occupation in the Neotropics [1,2,3,4,5]

  • Our first objective was to test the assumption that Neotropical Ruellia is marked by a higher diversification rate than Paleotropical Ruellia

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Summary

Introduction

Repeated observations in unrelated families of greater species richness in the Neotropics compared to the Paleotropics has yielded a classic pattern in plant biogeography [1,2]. Several studies have sought possible mechanisms to explain this pattern and one emerging consensus is that of higher net diversification rates in the Neotropics compared to Paleotropics [3]. This finding has been attributed to a variety factors including (a). Drivers of diversification in Ruellia aridification since the Miocene resulting in more severe contraction of rainforests and higher extinction in the Paleotropics compared to Neotropics and (b) uplift of the Andes in the Neogene followed by opportunistic niche occupation in the Neotropics [1,2,3,4,5]. Biotic interactions are assumed to be as important to biodiversity evolution but are less commonly studied owing to inherent complexity and numbers of such interactions [6,7,8]

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