Abstract
BackgroundNumerous researchers have posited that there should be a strong negative relationship between the evolutionary distance among species and their ecological similarity. Alternative evidence suggests that members of adaptive radiations should display no relationship between divergence time and ecological similarity because rapid evolution results in near-simultaneous speciation early in the clade's history. In this paper, we performed the first investigation of ecological diversity in a phylogenetic context using a mammalian adaptive radiation, the Malagasy primates.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe collected data for 43 extant species including: 1) 1064 species by locality samples, 2) GIS climate data for each sampling locality, and 3) the phylogenetic relationships of the species. We calculated the niche space of each species by summarizing the climatic variation at localities of known occurrence. Climate data from all species occurrences at all sites were entered into a principal components analysis. We calculated the mean value of the first two PCA axes, representing rainfall and temperature diversity, for each species. We calculated the K statistic using the Physig program for Matlab to examine how well the climatic niche space of species was correlated with phylogeny.Conclusions/SignificanceWe found that there was little relationship between the phylogenetic distance of Malagasy primates and their rainfall and temperature niche space, i.e., closely related species tend to occupy different climatic niches. Furthermore, several species from different genera converged on a similar climatic niche. These results have important implications for the evolution of ecological diversity, and the long-term survival of these endangered species.
Highlights
With the development of advanced quantitative tools, researchers are well positioned to examine biological variation in an evolutionary context
For all Malagasy primates (n = 43), we found no significant phylogenetic signal in PC1 (K = 0.294, p = 0.116), which is related to rainfall patterns (Fig. 6) or in PC2 (K = 0.245, p = 0.429), which is related to temperature variables (Fig. 7)
Previous studies have suggested that a lack of phylogenetic signal in ecological data is typical of island faunas [10,11,12,13], given that insular settings are well known for their adaptive radiations [21]
Summary
With the development of advanced quantitative tools, researchers are well positioned to examine biological variation in an evolutionary context. Several authors have argued that there should be little relationship between niche similarity and phylogenetic distance in situations where the rate of evolutionary divergence is higher early in a clade’s history than later on, such as occurs in adaptive radiations [1,9,10,11]. This hypothesis is supported by several studies of Anolis lizards in the Caribbean, where closely related species occupy divergent niches [12,13]. We performed the first investigation of ecological diversity in a phylogenetic context using a mammalian adaptive radiation, the Malagasy primates
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