Abstract
Assemblage-level studies of mean trait variation are common in macroecology. However, how phylogenetic relationships among species affect trait-based macroecological patterns is still unresolved. I used an approach based on variation partitioning analysis using environmental and phylogenetic lineage variation as predictors to investigate whether variation in mean trait values among Neotropical sigmodontine rodent communities is best explained by macroecological adaptation, biogeographical history, or joint effects of both – the latter resulting in phylogenetic niche conservatism (PNC) at the metacommunity scale. Metacommunity PNC best explained mean variation in body size and skull/mandible shape across assemblages, and the pattern of metacommunity PNC suggests that influence of environmental factors on mean trait variation relies heavily on spatial biogeographical clade sorting. This suggests that biogeographical lineage distribution should be taken into account in analyses seeking to correlate environmental variables with mean trait variation.
Highlights
Biogeography seeks to understand the underlying biotic and abiotic processes responsible for the spatial and temporal distributions of organisms (Brown and Lomolino 1998)
One strategy that has been adopted to help resolve this issue involves removing phylogenetic non-independence before calculating the community-weighted means (CWM) (Diniz-Filho et al 2007, Diniz-Filho et al 2009, Olalla-Tárraga et al 2010). These authors calculated the CWM of the specific component, allowing exploration of the CWM independent of evolutionary history. This approach makes it difficult to investigate how much of the CWM is explained jointly by environmental variables and the phylogenetic distribution of lineages
To determine how much of the variation in mean traits can be explained by environmental effects, how much is explained by the historical distribution of the lineages alone, and how much is shared between them, there is an interesting approach which involves the use of a metric that accounts for variation in community phylogenetic composition
Summary
Biogeography seeks to understand the underlying biotic and abiotic processes responsible for the spatial and temporal distributions of organisms (Brown and Lomolino 1998). This approach makes it difficult to investigate how much of the CWM is explained jointly by environmental variables and the phylogenetic distribution of lineages (the portion of variation corresponding to phylogenetic niche conservatism at the metacommunity level; see Pillar and Duarte 2010).
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