Climate and habitat niche diversification in a southwest European squamate assemblage

Autor: Daniel Escoriza, Laia Mestre, Guillem Pascual
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Evolutionary Ecology. 35:761-777
ISSN: 1573-8477
0269-7653
DOI: 10.1007/s10682-021-10139-4
Popis: The variations in the niches of species within a clade depend on the complex interplay among geography, climatic history, and species-specific factors. For the first time, we investigated the evolutionary patterns in the climate and habitat niches of 50 species in the order Squamata and a nested subclade (family Lacertidae) in southwest Europe. The habitats of species were characterized at three spatial levels: 1 km2 (macrohabitat), 2830 m2 (mesohabitat), and 100 m2 (microhabitat). We compared three evolutionary models Brownian motion, Ornstein-Uhlenbeck, and Early Burst and fitted Pagel models (lambda, kappa, and delta) to the niche variations to assess the strength of the phylogenetic signal, tempo, and mode of evolution. We expected: (i) that the habitat niche would be more labile than the climate niche; and (ii) variability in the rate of niche evolution as a response to recent climate cycles. The Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model provided a better fit for the different dimensions of the niche, implying evolutionary attraction towards the niche optimum. In the climatic niches for both groups of taxa, a model with an accelerated rate of evolution was preferred to alternative Pagel’s models. We found a greater degree of phylogenetic signal in the climatic niche than in the habitat niche. Overall, squamates exhibited evolutionary lability according to the variation in the habitat structure, thereby suggesting that none of the major subclades is specialized for any specific habitat component.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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