Acknowledging uncertainty in evolutionary reconstructions of ecological niches

Hannah L. Owens*, Vivian Ribeiro, Erin E. Saupe, Marlon E. Cobos, Peter A. Hosner, Jacob C. Cooper, Abdallah M. Samy, Vijay Barve, Narayani Barve, Carlos J. Munoz-R, A. Townsend Peterson

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)
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Abstract

Reconstructing ecological niche evolution can provide insight into the biogeography and diversification of evolving lineages. However, comparative phylogenetic methods may infer the history of ecological niche evolution inaccurately because (a) species' niches are often poorly characterized; and (b) phylogenetic comparative methods rely on niche summary statistics rather than full estimates of species' environmental tolerances. Here, we propose a new framework for coding ecological niches and reconstructing their evolution that explicitly acknowledges and incorporates the uncertainty introduced by incomplete niche characterization. Then, we modify existing ancestral state inference methods to leverage full estimates of environmental tolerances. We provide a worked empirical example of our method, investigating ecological niche evolution in the New World orioles (Aves: Passeriformes:Icterusspp.). Temperature and precipitation tolerances were generally broad and conserved among orioles, with niche reduction and specialization limited to a few terminal branches. Tools for performing these reconstructions are available in a new R package callednichevol.

Original languageEnglish
JournalEcology and Evolution
Volume10
Issue number14
Pages (from-to)6967-6977
Number of pages11
ISSN2045-7758
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Keywords

  • comparative phylogenetics
  • fundamental ecological niche
  • Icterus
  • phylogenetic niche conservatism
  • ANCESTRAL CHARACTER STATES
  • PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS
  • CONSERVATISM
  • MODELS
  • CLIMATE
  • BIOGEOGRAPHY
  • BIOLOGY
  • SPACE
  • BIAS

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