Abstract
The ecological niche can be thought of as a volume in multidimensional space, where each dimension describes an abiotic condition or biotic resource required by a species. The shape, size, and evolution of this volume strongly determine interactions among species and influence their current and potential geographical distributions, but the geometry of niches is poorly understood. Here, we analyse temperature response functions and host plant ranges for hundreds of potentially destructive plant-associated fungi and oomycetes. We demonstrate that niche specialization is uncorrelated on abiotic (i.e. temperature response) and biotic (i.e. host range) axes, that host interactions restrict fundamental niche breadth to form the realized niche, and that both abiotic and biotic niches show limited phylogenetic constraint. The ecological terms ‘generalist’ and ‘specialist’ therefore do not apply to these microbes, as specialization evolves independently on different niche axes. This adaptability makes plant pathogens a formidable threat to agriculture and forestry.
Highlights
The ecological niche can be thought of as a volume in multidimensional space, where each dimension describes an abiotic condition or biotic resource required by a species
We investigated the evolution of temperature response and host range in the oomycete genus Phytophthora to determine which, if either, niche axis is under stronger phylogenetic constraint and more likely to control geographical distributions
Our analysis of the cardinal temperatures of plant-associated fungi and oomycetes shows that abiotic fundamental niches, as measured by temperature response functions, are wider than their corresponding realized niches
Summary
The ecological niche can be thought of as a volume in multidimensional space, where each dimension describes an abiotic condition or biotic resource required by a species. The ecological terms ‘generalist’ and ‘specialist’ do not apply to these microbes, as specialization evolves independently on different niche axes This adaptability makes plant pathogens a formidable threat to agriculture and forestry. Details of the geometry of the niche remain unresolved[4], such as the shape of the response of metabolic rates to temperature[8,9], the influence of biotic interactions on the abiotic niche[10,11], and the ability of species to specialize independently on abiotic conditions and biotic resources[12]. We analyse temperature response functions and host ranges of hundreds of plant-associated fungi and oomycetes to understand the shape and size of an abiotic niche axis, and test whether these abiotic and biotic niches are correlated or independent. Much less is known about the niche dimensions of microbes, which are highly diverse and key to ecosystem function[14]
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