1 Abstract
Aim Community phylogenetic studies use information about species’ evolutionary relationships to understand the processes of community ecological assembly. A central premise of the field is that species’ evolution maps onto ecological patterns, and phylogeny reveals something more than species’ traits alone. We argue, therefore, that there is a need to better understand and model the interaction of phylogeny with species’ traits and community composition.
Innovation We outline a new method that identifies clades with unusual ecological structures, based around partitioning the variation of species’ site occupancies (β-diversity). Eco-phylogenetic theory would predict that these clades should also demonstrate distinct evolutionary trajectories. We suggest that modelling the evolution of independent trait data in these clades represents a strong test of whether there is an association between species’ ecological structure and evolutionary history.
Main conclusions Using an empirical dataset of mammals from around the world, we identify two clades of rodents that tend not to co-occur (are phylogenetically overdispersed), and then find independent evidence of slower rates of body mass evolution in these clades. We suggest that our approach, which assumes nothing about the mode of species’ trait evolution but rather seeks to explain it using ecological information, presents a new way to examine eco-phylogenetic structure.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to XXX anonymous reviewers, and the editorial board, for their help improving this manuscript. TJD and the Davies lab are funded by Fonds de Recherche Nature et Technologies grant number 168004 and an NSERC Discovery Grant. WDP and the Pearse lab are funded by NSF ABI-1759965, NSF EF-1802605, and USDA Forest Service agreement 18-CS-11046000-041.
Footnotes
Biosketch: All authors’ research interests focus on the intersect between ecology, evolutionary biology, and biostatistics. WDP focuses, in particular, on the use of phylogenies to infer how ecological assembly and function operates, and the role of phylogenies in conservation prioritisation.