Influence of historical changes in tropical reef habitat on the diversification of coral reef fishes

Fabien Leprieur,David Mouillot,Théo Gaboriau,Loic Pellissier

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-00049-4

Abstract

Past environmental changes are expected to have profoundly impacted diversity dynamics through time. While some previous studies showed an association between past climate changes or tectonic events and important shifts in lineage diversification, it is only recently that past environmental changes have been explicitly integrated in diversification models to test their influence on diversification rates. Here, we used a global reconstruction of tropical reef habitat dynamics during the Cenozoic and phylogenetic diversification models to test the influence of (i) major geological events, (ii) reef habitat fragmentation and (iii) reef area on the diversification of 9 major clades of tropical reef fish (Acanthuridae, Balistoidea, Carangoidea, Chaetodontidae, Haemulinae, Holocentridae, Labridae, Pomacentridae and Sparidae). The diversification models revealed a weak association between paleo-habitat changes and diversification dynamics. Specifically, the fragmentation of tropical reef habitats over the Cenozoic was found to be a driver of tropical reef fish diversification for 2 clades. However, overall, our approach did not allow the identification of striking associations between diversification dynamics and paleo-habitat fragmentation in contrast with theoretical model’s predictions.

Highlights

Past environmental changes are expected to have profoundly impacted diversity dynamics through time
Due to the weak support given to those hypotheses and the inconsistencies revealed by tree reconstruction’s posterior distributions, our study remains inconclusive about the role of plate tectonics over the Cenozoic on the diversification tropical reef fishes, even if varying responses were observed between them
Our results indicate that diversification rates of only two tropical reef fish clades could show a dependence to reef habitat fragmentation

Summary

Introduction

Past environmental changes are expected to have profoundly impacted diversity dynamics through time. Studies employed a descriptive approach by identifying times where diversification changes and associate them temporally with major environmental changes based on simple visual inspections[11,12] To tackle this issue, Condamine et al proposed an environmentaldependence diversification model derived from time-dependent diversification m odels[13,14]. Numerous studies combined molecular phylogenetics and the fossil record to understand the origin and tempo of fish diversification in coral r eefs[24,25,26,27,28] Their results suggest that the development of a complex mosaic of reef habitats in the Indo-Australian Archipelago (IAA) during the Miocene, may have promoted cladogenesis, and provided a refuge from extinction. Despite the knowledge gained from these studies, a clear and quantitative assessment of how earth history events have influenced the diversification of coral reef fishes is still lacking

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion