scholarly journals Cooperate-and-radiate co-evolution between ants and plants

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina M. Kaur ◽  
Pierre-Jean G. Malé ◽  
Erik Spence ◽  
Crisanto Gomez ◽  
Megan E. Frederickson
Keyword(s):  
Text Mining ◽  
Seed Dispersal ◽  
Comparative Methods ◽  
Species Level ◽  
Phylogenetic Comparative Methods ◽  
Diversification Rates ◽  
Ecological Interaction ◽  
Recent Species ◽  
Lineage Diversification ◽  
Key Innovations

AbstractMutualisms may be “key innovations” that spur diversification in one partner lineage, but no study has evaluated whether mutualism accelerates diversification in both interacting lineages. Recent research suggests that plants that attract ant mutualists for defense or seed dispersal have higher diversification rates than non-ant associated plant lineages. We ask whether the reciprocal is true: does the ecological interaction between ants and plants also accelerate diversification in ants? In other words, do ants and plants cooperate-and-radiate? We used a novel text-mining approach to determine which ant species associate with plants in defensive or seed dispersal mutualisms. We investigated patterns of trait evolution and lineage diversification using phylogenetic comparative methods on a large, recent species-level ant phylogeny. We found that ants that associate mutualistically with plants have elevated diversification rates compared to non-mutualistic ants, suggesting that ants and plants cooperate-and-radiate.

scholarly journals Explaining large-scale patterns of vertebrate diversity

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 20150506 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Wiens
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Comparative Methods ◽  
Phylogenetic Comparative Methods ◽  
Metabolic Rates ◽  
Diversification Rates ◽  
Richness Patterns ◽  
Current Species

The major clades of vertebrates differ dramatically in their current species richness, from 2 to more than 32 000 species each, but the causes of this variation remain poorly understood. For example, a previous study noted that vertebrate clades differ in their diversification rates, but did not explain why they differ. Using a time-calibrated phylogeny and phylogenetic comparative methods, I show that most variation in diversification rates among 12 major vertebrate clades has a simple ecological explanation: predominantly terrestrial clades (i.e. birds, mammals, and lizards and snakes) have higher net diversification rates than predominantly aquatic clades (i.e. amphibians, crocodilians, turtles and all fish clades). These differences in diversification rates are then strongly related to patterns of species richness. Habitat may be more important than other potential explanations for richness patterns in vertebrates (such as climate and metabolic rates) and may also help explain patterns of species richness in many other groups of organisms.

scholarly journals Phylogenetic tests for evolutionary innovation: the problematic link between key innovations and exceptional diversification

2017 ◽  
Vol 372 (1735) ◽  
pp. 20160417 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel L. Rabosky
Keyword(s):  
Information Content ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Phylogenetic Trees ◽  
Diversification Rates ◽  
Evolutionary Innovation ◽  
Key Innovation ◽  
Branching Patterns ◽  
Lineage Diversification ◽  
Key Innovations ◽  
Adaptive Zone

Evolutionary innovation contributes to the spectacular diversity of species and phenotypes across the tree of life. ‘Key innovations’ are widely operationalized within evolutionary biology as traits that facilitate increased diversification rates, such that lineages bearing the traits ultimately contain more species than closely related lineages lacking the focal trait. In this article, I briefly review the inference, analysis and interpretation of evolutionary innovation on phylogenetic trees. I argue that differential rates of lineage diversification should not be used as the basis for key innovation tests, despite the statistical tractability of such approaches. Under traditional interpretations of the macroevolutionary ‘adaptive zone’, we should not necessarily expect key innovations to confer faster diversification rates upon lineages that possess them relative to their extant sister clades. I suggest that a key innovation is a trait that allows a lineage to interact with the environment in a fundamentally different way and which, as a result, increases the total diversification—but not necessarily the diversification rate—of the parent clade. Considered alone, branching patterns in phylogenetic trees are poorly suited to the inference of evolutionary innovation due to their inherently low information content with respect to the processes that produce them. However, phylogenies may be important for identifying transformational shifts in ecological and morphological space that are characteristic of innovation at the macroevolutionary scale. This article is part of the themed issue ‘Process and pattern in innovations from cells to societies’.

scholarly journals Digging their own macroevolutionary grave: fossoriality as an evolutionary dead end in snakes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vivek Philip Cyriac ◽  
Ullasa Kodandaramaiah
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Phylogenetic Comparative Methods ◽  
Transition Rates ◽  
Ecological Interactions ◽  
Ecological Specialization ◽  
Diversification Rates ◽  
Mixed Support ◽  
Dead End ◽  
Broad Scale ◽  
Lineage Diversification

The tree of life is highly asymmetrical in its clade wise species richness and this has often been attributed to variation in diversification rates either across time or lineages. Variations across lineages are usually associated with traits that increase lineage diversification. Certain traits can also hinder diversification by increasing extinction and such traits are called evolutionary dead-ends. Ecological specialization has usually been considered as an evolutionary dead-end. However, recent analyses of specializations along single axes have provided mixed support for this model. Here, we test if fossoriality, a trait that forces specialization at multiple axes, acts as an evolutionary dead-end in squamates (lizards and snakes) using recently developed phylogenetic comparative methods. We show that fossoriality is an evolutionary dead-end in snakes but not in lizards. Fossorial snakes exhibit reduced speciation and increased extinction compared to non-fossorial snakes. Our analysis also indicates that transition rates from fossoriality to non-fossoriality in snakes are significantly lower than transition rates from non-fossoriality to fossoriality. Overall our results suggest that broad scale ecological interactions that lead to specialization at multiple axes limit diversification.

scholarly journals Interaction Between Ploidy, Breeding System, and Lineage Diversification

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rosana Zenil-Ferguson ◽  
J. Gordon Burleigh ◽  
William A. Freyman ◽  
Boris Igić ◽  
Itay Mayrose ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Breeding System ◽  
Whole Genome Duplication ◽  
Genome Duplication ◽  
Whole Genome ◽  
Self Incompatibility ◽  
Evolutionary Pathway ◽  
Diversification Rates ◽  
Extinction Rates ◽  
Biological Hierarchy ◽  
Lineage Diversification

AbstractIf particular traits consistently affect rates of speciation and extinction, broad macroevolutionary patterns can be understood as consequences of selection at high levels of the biological hierarchy. Identifying traits associated with diversification rate differences is complicated by the wide variety of characters under consideration and the statistical challenges of testing for associations from comparative phylogenetic data. Ploidy (diploid vs. polyploid states) and breeding system (self-incompatible vs. self-compatible states) have been repeatedly suggested as possible drivers of differential diversification. We investigate the connections of these traits, including their interaction, to speciation and extinction rates in Solanaceae. We show that the effect of ploidy on diversification can be largely explained by its correlation with breeding system and that additional unknown factors, alongside breeding system, influence diversification rates. These results are largely robust to allowing for diploidization. Finally, we find that the most common evolutionary pathway to polyploidy in Solanaceae occurs via direct breakdown of self-incompatibility by whole genome duplication, rather than indirectly via breakdown followed by polyploidization.

scholarly journals Phylogenetic Comparative Methods and the Evolution of Multivariate Phenotypes

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 405-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean C. Adams ◽  
Michael L. Collyer
Keyword(s):  
Phylogenetic Analysis ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Generalized Least Squares ◽  
Comparative Methods ◽  
High Dimensional ◽  
Phenotypic Integration ◽  
Phylogenetic Comparative Methods ◽  
Evolutionary Trends ◽  
Phenotype Space ◽  
Multivariate Phenotypes

Evolutionary biology is multivariate, and advances in phylogenetic comparative methods for multivariate phenotypes have surged to accommodate this fact. Evolutionary trends in multivariate phenotypes are derived from distances and directions between species in a multivariate phenotype space. For these patterns to be interpretable, phenotypes should be characterized by traits in commensurate units and scale. Visualizing such trends, as is achieved with phylomorphospaces, should continue to play a prominent role in macroevolutionary analyses. Evaluating phylogenetic generalized least squares (PGLS) models (e.g., phylogenetic analysis of variance and regression) is valuable, but using parametric procedures is limited to only a few phenotypic variables. In contrast, nonparametric, permutation-based PGLS methods provide a flexible alternative and are thus preferred for high-dimensional multivariate phenotypes. Permutation-based methods for evaluating covariation within multivariate phenotypes are also well established and can test evolutionary trends in phenotypic integration. However, comparing evolutionary rates and modes in multivariate phenotypes remains an important area of future development.

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