Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.
Ecol Lett. 2024 Aug;27(8):e14490. doi: 10.1111/ele.14490.
Species' traits and interactions are products of evolutionary history. Despite the long-standing hypothesis that closely related species possess similar traits, and thus experience stronger competition, measuring the effect of evolutionary history on the ecology of natural communities remains challenging. We propose a novel framework to test whether phylogeny influences patterns of coexistence and abundance of species assemblages. In our approach, phylogenetic trees are used to parameterize species' interactions, which in turn determine the abundance of species in a given assemblage. We use likelihoods to score models parameterized with a given phylogeny, and contrast them with models built using random trees, allowing us to test whether phylogenetic information helps to predict species' abundances. Our statistical framework reveals that interactions are indeed structured by phylogeny in a large set of experimental plant communities. Our results confirm that evolutionary history can help predict, and potentially manage or conserve, the structure and function of complex ecological communities.
物种的特征和相互作用是进化历史的产物。尽管长期以来一直存在这样的假设，即密切相关的物种具有相似的特征，因此会经历更强的竞争，但衡量进化历史对自然群落生态的影响仍然具有挑战性。我们提出了一种新的框架来检验系统发育是否会影响物种组合的共存和丰度模式。在我们的方法中，使用系统发育树来参数化物种的相互作用，这反过来又决定了给定组合中物种的丰度。我们使用似然来对用给定系统发育参数化的模型进行评分，并将其与使用随机树构建的模型进行对比，从而可以检验系统发育信息是否有助于预测物种的丰度。我们的统计框架表明，在一组大型实验植物群落中，相互作用确实是由系统发育结构决定的。我们的结果证实，进化历史可以帮助预测，并且可能有助于管理或保护复杂生态群落的结构和功能。
