New progress in community assembly: community phylogenetic struc-ture combining evolution and ecology

Abstract

Community assembly has long been an important issue in community ecology. The study of community phylogenetic structure, which applies phylogeny to community ecology studies, has provided an effective way to disentangle the most important ecological processes that drive community assembly. Study- ing the phylogenetic structure of a community involves firstly the construction of a supertree representing the species pool of the community, then a calculation of phylogenetic distances between all species within the community, and finally an inference of phylogenetic structure (e.g., clustering, overdispersion) obtained by statistically testing whether the obtained phylogenetic distances are different from those expected under ran- dom model, hence revealing key ecological processes involved in community assembly (e.g., habitat filter- ing, competition exclusion). Community phylogenetic structure is different when studied at different taxo- nomic, spatial or temporal scales. At small spatial scales, community phylogenetic pattern tends to change from clustering to overdispersion with decreasing taxonomical scale or increasing tree age class, while the pattern tends to be tighter clustering at larger spatial scales. Phylogenetic information also indicates the in-