Historical connectivity and environmental filtering jointly determine the freshwater fish assemblages on Taiwan and Hainan Islands of China.

Abstract

The biotas of Taiwan and Hainan Islands are of continental origin, but the manner with which historical and ecological factors shaped these insular species is still unclear. Here, we used freshwater fish as a model to fill this gap by quantifying the phylogenetic structure of the insular faunas and disentangling the relative contribution of potential drivers. Firstly, we used clustering and ordination analyses to identify regional species pools. To test whether the insular freshwater fish faunas were phylogenetically clustered or overdispersed, we calculated the net relatedness index (NRI) and the nearest taxon index (NTI). Finally, we implemented logistic regressions to disentangle the relative importance of species attributes (i.e., maximum body length, climatic niche dissimilarity [ND], and diversification) and historical connectivity (HC) in explaining the insular faunas. Our results showed that the most possible species pools of Taiwan are Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, and those of Hainan are Guangdong and Guangxi provinces. These insular faunas showed random phylogenetic structures in terms of NRI values. According to the NTI values, however, the Taiwanese fauna displayed more phylogenetic clustering, while the Hainanese one was more overdispersed. Both the standard and phylogenetic logistic regressions identified HC and climatic ND as the 2 top explanatory variables for species assemblages on these islands. Our reconstruction of the paleo-connected drainage basins provides insight into how historical processes and ecological factors interact to shape the freshwater fish fauna of the East Asian islands.