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Tuesday "Noon" Seminar: April 10, 2007
12:30-1:45 p.m. in Biosciences West (map of building location), Room 208 |
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Talk Abstract A major goal in ecology and evolution has been to determine why species diversity varies among communities in space and time. It has been argued that this prominent biological pattern could result from phylogenetic niche conservatism and differential niche evolution among clades. The central hypothesis is that, a limited subset of clades that have recently evolved novel traits, have invaded evolutionarily less favorable environments. This process should result in younger functionally convergent lineages in less favorable climates. Here I test this hypothesis for woody plants by using phylogenetic supertrees, several large plant functional trait databases, and the largest plant distributional database for the New World. Null model analyses, controlling for species richness, generally showed that temperate zone plant assemblages harbor younger lineages that contain a highly winnowed subset of the global functional trait volume. Tropical forests were found to, on average, contain assemblages that were more functionally diverse and older than expected given species richness. Taken together the functional and phylogenetic results suggest that phylogenetic niche conservatism and differential niche evolution plays an important role in generating species diversity gradients. |
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