Abstract
Lineages tend to retain ecological characteristics of their ancestors through time. However, for some traits, selection during evolutionary history may have also played a role in determining trait values. To address the relative importance of these processes requires large-scale quantification of traits and evolutionary relationships among species. The Amazonian tree flora comprises a high diversity of angiosperm lineages and species with widely differing life-history characteristics, providing an excellent system to investigate the combined influences of evolutionary heritage and selection in determining trait variation. We used trait data related to the major axes of life-history variation among tropical trees (e.g. growth and mortality rates) from 577 inventory plots in closed-canopy forest, mapped onto a phylogenetic hypothesis spanning more than 300 genera including all major angiosperm clades to test for evolutionary constraints on traits. We found significant phylogenetic signal (PS) for all traits, consistent with evolutionarily related genera having more similar characteristics than expected by chance. Although there is also evidence for repeated evolution of pioneer and shade tolerant life-history strategies within independent lineages, the existence of significant PS allows clearer predictions of the links between evolutionary diversity, ecosystem function and the response of tropical forests to global change.
Highlights
Evolutionary heritage may act as a major constraint on the ecological roles that species in a lineage can occupy
All traits showed similar or slightly higher Blomberg’s K values for just Inga or Protieae than for all taxa together. This is the first study, to our knowledge, to investigate the extent of phylogenetic signal (PS) for traits that quantify the main axes of lifehistory variation in survival and growth of trees at such a large phylogenetic and spatial scale
Our results demonstrate that for Amazonian forests, closely related genera have similar life-history strategies, with all traits showing similar levels of PS
Summary
Evolutionary heritage may act as a major constraint on the ecological roles that species in a lineage can occupy. We explore patterns of PS at large spatial and phylogenetic scales using a sequence-based phylogeny to test whether there are significant levels of PS for four key traits related to the major axes of life-history variation among tropical trees: tree growth and mortality rates, wood density and potential tree size. These traits are related to resource acquisition and allocation, defence and dispersal ability [15,16] and represent important axes of functional variation which drive variation in plant performance and function in many ecosystems [17]. Statistical analyses were performed in the R v. 3.1.1 program [47], using ape [48], phytools [44] and data.table [49] packages
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