When phylogeny and ecology meet: Modeling the occurrence of Trichoptera with environmental and phylogenetic data.

Bruno Spacek Godoy,Sara Lodi,Lucas Marques Camargos

doi:10.1002/ece3.4031

Bruno Spacek Godoy, Sara Lodi + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.4031

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Abstract

Ecological studies are increasingly considering phylogenetic relationships among species. The phylogeny is used as a proxy or filter to improve statistical tests and retain evolutionary elements, such as niche conservation. We used the phylogenetic topology to improve the model for occurrence of Trichoptera genera in Cerrado (Brazilian Savanna) streams. We tested whether parameters generated by logistic models of occurrence, using phylogenetic signals, are better than models generated without phylogenetic information. We used a model with Bayesian updating to examine the influence of stream water pH and phylogenetic relationship among genera on the occurrence of Trichoptera genera. Then, we compared this model with the logistic model for each Trichoptera genus. The probability of occurrence of most genera increased with water pH, and the phylogeny‐based explicit logistic model improved the parameters estimated for observed genera. The inferred relationship between genera occurrence and stream pH improved, indicating that phylogeny adds relevant information when estimating ecological responses of organisms. Water with elevated acidity (low pH values) may be restrictive for the occurrence of Trichoptera larvae, especially if the regional streams exhibit neutral to alkaline water, as is observed in the Cerrado region. Using phylogeny‐based modeling to predict species occurrence is a prominent opportunity to extend our current statistical framework based on environmental conditions, as it enables a more precise estimation of ecological parameters.

Highlights

The ecological niche is the key concept for understanding the occurrence and distribution of species in natural environments (Lepš, de Bello, Lavorel, & Berman, 2006)
The importance of the niche theory in structuring communities has been at the core of ecological theory since the establishment of Ecology as a science, from the formal proposal for communities (Hutchinson, 1957) to the dichotomy of niche-based versus neutral models (Mikkelson, 2005)
We proposed a multilevel model to estimate environmental and trait dependence parameters, using phylogenetic signals to improve the prediction of Trichoptera genera occurrence related to chemical characteristics of Cerrado (Brazilian savanna) streams

Summary

| INTRODUCTION

The ecological niche is the key concept for understanding the occurrence and distribution of species in natural environments (Lepš, de Bello, Lavorel, & Berman, 2006). Many studies indicate that occurrence of Trichoptera species depends on environmental conditions (Couceiro, Hamada, Ferreira, Forsberg, & Silva, 2007; Couceiro, Hamada, Forsberg, & Padovesi-Fonseca, 2010; Cuffney et al, 2011) Another advantage of using an animal clade is that phylogenetic signals frequently show influence in contemporary ecological and behavioral traits (Harmon et al, 2010; Dias et al, 2009), providing good models to test phylogenetic relationship related to environment dependence. We determined the extent to which using evolutionary information provided by phylogenetic tree improves inferences derived from ecological studies, allowing better estimation of statistical parameters related to environment occurrence–dependence of Trichoptera genera

| METHODS

| DISCUSSION

Findings

CONFLICT OF INTEREST