Department of Genetic Ecology, Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic, Zamek 1, Průhonice, 25243, Czech Republic.
Wageningen Environmental Research (Alterra), P.O. Box 47, Wageningen, NL-6700 AA, The Netherlands.
Conserv Biol. 2020 Dec;34(6):1536-1548. doi: 10.1111/cobi.13556. Epub 2020 Sep 9.
Present biodiversity comprises the evolutionary heritage of Earth's epochs. Lineages from particular epochs are often found in particular habitats, but whether current habitat decline threatens the heritage from particular epochs is unknown. We hypothesized that within a given region, humans threaten specifically habitats that harbor lineages from a particular geological epoch. We expect so because humans threaten environments that dominated and lineages that diversified during these epochs. We devised a new approach to quantify, per habitat type, diversification of lineages from different epochs. For Netherlands, one of the floristically and ecologically best-studied regions, we quantified the decline of habitat types and species in the past century. We defined habitat types based on vegetation classification and used existing ranking of decline of vegetation classes and species. Currently, most declining habitat types and the group of red-listed species are characterized by increased diversification of lineages dating back to Paleogene, specifically to Paleocene-Eocene and Oligocene. Among vulnerable habitat types with large representation of lineages from these epochs were sublittoral and eulittoral zones of temperate seas and 2 types of nutrient-poor, open habitats. These losses of evolutionary heritage would go unnoticed with classical measures of evolutionary diversity. Loss of heritage from Paleocene-Eocene became unrelated to decline once low competition, shade tolerance, and low proportion of non-Apiaceae were accounted for, suggesting that these variables explain the loss of heritage from Paleocene-Eocene. Losses of heritage from Oligocene were partly explained by decline of habitat types occupied by weak competitors and shade-tolerant species. Our results suggest a so-far unappreciated human threat to evolutionary heritage: habitat decline threatens descendants from particular epochs. If the trends persist into the future uncontrolled, there may be no habitats within the region for many descendants of evolutionary ancient epochs, such as Paleogene.
当前的生物多样性构成了地球各个时代的进化遗产。来自特定时代的谱系通常存在于特定的栖息地中，但目前的栖息地减少是否威胁到特定时代的遗产尚不清楚。我们假设，在给定的区域内，人类特别威胁到那些承载特定地质时代谱系的栖息地。我们之所以这样认为，是因为人类威胁到了在这些时代占主导地位并多样化的环境和谱系。我们设计了一种新方法来量化不同时代谱系在每个栖息地类型中的多样化程度。对于荷兰来说，这是一个植物区系和生态研究最好的地区之一，我们量化了过去一个世纪中栖息地类型和物种的减少情况。我们根据植被分类定义了栖息地类型，并利用现有的植被类群和物种下降等级进行了量化。目前，大多数正在减少的栖息地类型和红色名录物种群体的特征是，源自古近纪的谱系多样化程度增加，特别是始新世-古新世和渐新世。在这些时期的谱系代表性较大的脆弱栖息地类型中，包括温带海洋的亚潮带和潮间带以及 2 种营养贫乏、开放的栖息地。如果使用经典的进化多样性衡量标准，这些进化遗产的丧失将不会被注意到。一旦考虑到低竞争、耐荫性和非伞形科植物的比例较低，古新世-始新世的遗产损失就与衰退无关，这表明这些变量解释了古新世-始新世的遗产损失。渐新世的遗产损失部分归因于竞争力较弱和耐荫物种占据的栖息地类型的减少。我们的研究结果表明，人类对进化遗产构成了迄今为止尚未被认识到的威胁：栖息地减少威胁到特定时代的后代。如果这些趋势持续到未来且不受控制，那么该地区可能没有许多来自古老时代（如古近纪）的进化后代的栖息地。
