Department of Biology, Lund University Biology Building, Sölvegatan 35, 223 62, Lund, Sweden.
Sci Rep. 2021 Oct 1;11(1):19560. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-98842-8.
It is well known that ecological and evolutionary processes act in concert while shaping biological communities. Diversification can, for example, arise through ecological opportunity and adaptive radiations and competition play an essential role in such diversification. Eco-evolutionary components of competition are thus important for our understanding of community assembly. Such understanding in turn facilitates interpretation of trait- and phylogenetic community patterns in the light of the processes that shape them. Here, I investigate the link between competition, diversification, and trait- and phylogenetic- community patterns using a trait-based model of adaptive radiations. I evaluate the paradigm that competition is an ecological process that drives large trait- and phylogenetic community distances through limiting similarity. Contrary to the common view, I identify low or in some cases counterintuitive relationships between competition and mean phylogenetic distances due to diversification late in evolutionary time and peripheral parts of niche space when competition is weak. Community patterns as a function of competition also change as diversification progresses as the relationship between competition and trait similarity among species can flip from positive to negative with time. The results thus provide novel perspectives on community assembly and emphasize the importance of acknowledging eco-evolutionary processes when interpreting community data.
众所周知，生态和进化过程在塑造生物群落时协同作用。例如，多样化可以通过生态机会和适应性辐射产生，而竞争在这种多样化中起着至关重要的作用。因此，竞争的生态进化组成部分对于我们理解群落组装很重要。这种理解反过来又有助于根据塑造它们的过程来解释特征和系统发育群落模式。在这里，我使用适应性辐射的基于特征的模型来研究竞争、多样化以及特征和系统发育群落模式之间的联系。我评估了竞争是一种通过限制相似性来驱动大特征和系统发育群落距离的生态过程的范式。与普遍观点相反，由于进化后期的多样化和竞争较弱时生态位空间的外围部分，我发现竞争与平均系统发育距离之间的关系较低或在某些情况下与直觉相反。随着多样化的进展，群落模式作为竞争的函数也会发生变化，因为物种之间的竞争与特征相似性之间的关系可能随着时间的推移从正变为负。因此，这些结果为群落组装提供了新的视角，并强调在解释群落数据时承认生态进化过程的重要性。
