Loomis Laboratory of Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801.
Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Apr 7;117(14):7879-7887. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1915088117. Epub 2020 Mar 24.
Phylogenetic trees describe both the evolutionary process and community diversity. Recent work has established that they exhibit scale-invariant topology, which quantifies the fact that their branching lies in between the two extreme cases of balanced binary trees and maximally unbalanced ones. In addition, the backbones of phylogenetic trees exhibit bursts of diversification on all timescales. Here, we present a simple, coarse-grained statistical model of niche construction coupled to speciation. Finite-size scaling analysis of the dynamics shows that the resultant phylogenetic tree topology is scale-invariant due to a singularity arising from large niche construction fluctuations that follow extinction events. The same model recapitulates the bursty pattern of diversification in time. These results show how dynamical scaling laws of phylogenetic trees on long timescales can reflect the indelible imprint of the interplay between ecological and evolutionary processes.
系统发育树描述了进化过程和群落多样性。最近的研究已经确立，它们表现出具有标度不变性的拓扑结构，这定量地描述了这样一个事实，即它们的分支介于平衡二叉树和最大不平衡树这两种极端情况之间。此外，系统发育树的主干在所有时间尺度上都表现出多样化的爆发。在这里，我们提出了一个简单的、粗粒度的生态位构建与物种形成相结合的统计模型。对动力学的有限大小标度分析表明，由于大的生态位构建波动导致灭绝事件后出现奇点，因此产生的系统发育树拓扑结构具有标度不变性。同样的模型再现了时间上多样化的爆发模式。这些结果表明，长时间尺度上系统发育树的动力学标度规律如何反映生态和进化过程之间相互作用的不可磨灭的印记。
