Abstract
The tendency for species to retain their ancestral biological properties has been widely demonstrated, but the effect of phylogenetic constraints when progressing from species to ensemble-level properties requires further assessment. Here we test whether community-level patterns (environmental shifts in local species richness and turnover) are phylogenetically conserved, assessing whether their similarity across different families of lichens, insects, and birds is dictated by the relatedness of these families. We show a significant phylogenetic signal in the shape of the species richness-elevation curve and the decay of community similarity with elevation: closely related families share community patterns within the three major taxa. Phylogenetic influences are partly explained by similarities among families in conserved traits defining body plan and interactions, implying a scaling of phylogenetic effects from the organismal to the community level. Consequently, the phylogenetic signal in community-level patterns informs about how the historical legacy of a taxon and shared responses among related taxa to similar environments contribute to community assembly and diversity patterns.
Highlights
The tendency for species to retain their ancestral biological properties has been widely demonstrated, but the effect of phylogenetic constraints when progressing from species to ensemble-level properties requires further assessment
We test the prediction that these variables retain a significant phylogenetic signal, quantifying their degree of covariation with family-level phylogenies within the three major taxa
We centre on a set of organismal or higher-level features that are important in community assembly (Fig. 1) and test whether they display a significant phylogenetic signal
Summary
The tendency for species to retain their ancestral biological properties has been widely demonstrated, but the effect of phylogenetic constraints when progressing from species to ensemble-level properties requires further assessment. As a result of the process of descent with modification, evolutionarily related organisms tend to possess more similar biological features than distantly related ones[1] This legacy of common ancestry, termed phylogenetic signal, has long been recognised in physiological mechanisms, life histories, body plan and, more recently, in interactions[2,3,4]. This pattern can scale to higher levels than aggregated individual traits: differences in range size among species[5,6], or in speciationextinction dynamics among clades[7], may vary non-randomly with respect to phylogeny. We report a correspondence between community-level patterns along elevation, certain organismal features, and the relatedness of the families that produce the patterns, which suggest that phylogenetically conserved properties of organisms translate effectively into the structuring of entire ecological communities
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