Scientists
report new look at 'patterns in nature' in special issue of journal Ecology
Patterns in nature are in everything
from ocean currents to a flower's petal.
Scientists are taking a new look at
Earth patterns, studying the biodiversity of yard plants in the U.S. and that
of desert mammals in Israel, studying where flowers and bees live on the
Tibetan plateau and how willow trees in America's Midwest make use of water.
They're finding that ecology, the study
of relationships between living organisms and their environment, and
phylogenetics, research on evolutionary relationships among groups of
organisms, are inextricably intertwined.
Results of this tale of two fields are
highlighted in a special, August 2012 issue of the journal Ecology, published
by the Ecological Society of America (ESA). Most of the results reported are
funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The issue will be released at the annual
ESA meeting, held this year from August 5-10 in Portland, Ore.
Melding information from ecology and
phylogenetics allows scientists to understand why plants and animals are
distributed in certain patterns across landscapes, how these species adapt to
changing environments across evolutionary time--and where their populations may
be faltering.
"To understand the here and now,
ecologists need more knowledge of the past," says Saran Twombly, program
director in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology. "Incorporating evolutionary history and
phylogenies into studies of community ecology is revealing complex feedbacks
between ecological and evolutionary processes."
Maureen Kearney, also a program director
in NSF's Division of Environmental Biology adds, "Recent studies have
demonstrated that species' evolutionary histories can have profound effects on
the contemporary structure and composition of ecological communities."
In the face of rapid changes in Earth's
biota, understanding the evolutionary processes that drive patterns of species
diversity and coexistence in ecosystems has never been more pressing, write
co-editors Jeannine Cavender-Bares of the University of Minnesota, David
Ackerly of the University of California at Berkeley and Kenneth Kozak of the
University of Minnesota.
"As human domination of our planet
accelerates," says Cavender-Bares, "our best hope for restoring and
sustaining the ‘environmental services' of the biological world is to
understand how organisms assemble, persist and coexist in ecosystems across the
globe."
Papers in the volume address subjects
such as the vanishingly rare oak savanna ecosystem of U.S. northern tier
states, revealing an ancient footprint of history on the savanna as well as how
it has fared in a 40-year fire experiment.
Other results cover the influence of
ecological and evolutionary factors on hummingbird populations; habitat
specialization in willow tree communities; growth strategies in tropical tree
lineages and their implications for biodiversity in the Amazon region; and the
characteristics of common urban plants.
"The studies in this issue show
that knowledge of how organisms evolve reveals new insights into the ecology
and persistence of species," says Cavender-Bares.
Plants in urban yards, for example, are
more closely related to each other--and live shorter lives--than do plants in
rural areas, found Cavender-Bares and colleagues.
Their study compared plant diversity in
private urban yards in the U.S. Midwest with that in the rural NSF Cedar Creek
Long-Term Ecological Research site in Minnesota.
Cities are growing faster and faster,
with unexpected effects, says Sonja Knapp of the Hemholtz Center for
Environmental Research in Germany, lead author of the paper reporting the
results.
"Understanding how urban gardening
affects biodiversity is increasingly important," says Cavender-Bares. "Urbanites should consider maintaining
yards with a higher number of species."
In the special issue, researchers also
look at topics such as what determines the number of coexisting species in
local and regional communities of salamanders. Kenneth Kozak of the University
of Minnesota and John Wiens of Stony Brook University report that variation in
the amount of time salamanders occupy different climate zones is the primary
factor.
Evolution of an herbaceous flower called
goldfields, and how that led to the plant's affinity for certain habitats, is
the subject of a paper by David Ackerly, Nancy Emery of Purdue University and
colleagues. Emery is the paper's lead author.
In all, 17 papers combine ecology and
phylogenetics to offer new answers to long-standing questions about the
patterns and processes of biodiversity on Planet Earth.
Integrating Ecology and Phylogenetics
A special issue of the journal Ecology
Integrating ecology and phylogenetics:
the footprint of history in modern-day communities
Jeannine Cavender-Bares, David D.
Ackerly, Kenneth H. Kozak, Co-Editors
Synthesizing phylogenetic knowledge for
ecological research
Jeremy M. Beaulieu, Richard H. Ree,
Jeannine Cavender-Bares, Nicholas Deacon, George D. Weiblen, and Michael J.
Donoghue
Assessing the effects of spatial
contingency and environmental filtering on metacommunity phylogenetics
Pedro R. Peres-Neto, Mathew A. Leibold
and Stephane Dray
Phylogenetic species-area curves
Matthew R. Helmus and Anthony R. Ives
Phylogenetic tree shape as a predictor
of niche segregation
Jonathan Davies, Natalie Cooper, Jose
Alexandre Felizola Diniz Filho, Gavin H. Thomas, Shai Meiri
Shocks to the system: Community assembly
of the oak savanna in a 40-year fire frequency experiment
Jeannine Cavender-Bares and Peter B.
Reich
Demographic drivers of successional
changes in phylogenetic structure across life history stages in plant
communities
Natalia Norden, Susan Letcher, Vanessa
Boukili, Nathan Swenson, and Robin Chazdon
Phylogenetic and functional
characteristics of household yard floras and their changes along an
urbanization gradient
Sonja Knapp, Lucy Dinsmore, Cinzia
Fissore, Sarah Hobbie, Ina Jakobsdottir, Jens Kattge, Jennifer King, Stefan
Klotz, Daniel C. Laughlin, Joseph P. McFadden, and Jeannine Cavender-Bares
Untangling the influence of ecological
and evolutionary factors on trait variation across hummingbird assemblages
Catherine H. Graham, Juan L. Parra,
Boris A. Tinoco, F. Gary Stiles, Jim A. McGuire
Phylogenetic and functional alpha and
beta diversity in temperate and tropical tree communities
Nathan G. Swenson, David L. Erickson,
Xiangcheng Mi, Norman A. Bourg, Jimena Montana-Forero, Xuejun Ge, Robert Howe,
Jeffrey K. Lake, Xiaojuan Liu, Keping Ma, Nancai Pei, Jill Thompson, Maria
Uriarte, Amy Wolf, S. Joseph Wright, Wanhu Ye, Jinlong Zhang, Jess K. Zimmerman
and W. John Kress
Phylogenetic signal and phenotypic
plasticity in traits under variable competitive regimes
Jean H. Burns and Sharon Y. Strauss
Habitat specialization and the role of
trait lability in structuring hyper-diverse willow communities
Jessica Savage and Jeannine
Cavender-Bares
Niche evolution and habitat
specialization in Lasthenia
Nancy C. Emery, Elisabeth J. Forrestel,
Ginger Jui, Michael Park, Bruce G. Baldwin and David D. Ackerly
Phylogeny, ecology and the origins of
climate-richness relationships
Kenneth H. Kozak and John J. Wiens
Floral diversity and community structure
in Pedicularis (Orobanchaceae)
Deren A. R. Eaton, Charles B. Fenster,
Joe Hereford, Shuang-Quan Huang, Richard H. Ree
Herbivory, growth strategies and habitat
specialization in four tropical tree lineages: Implications for Amazonian
Beta-Diversity
Greg P.A Lamarre, Christopher Baraloto,
Claire Fortunel, Nallarett Davila, Italo Mesones, Julio Grandez Rios, Marcos
Rios, Elvis Valderrama, Paul Fine
Predicting the impact of tropical rain
forest conversion on insect herbivore abundance from plant traits and phylogeny
Timothy J. S. Whitfeld, Vojtech Novotny,
Scott E. Miller, Jan Hrcek, Petr Klimes, and George D. Weiblen
Phylogenetic diversity promotes
ecosystem stability
Marc W. Cadotte, Russell Dinnage, David Tilman
-NSF-
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