Comparative evolutionary diversity and phylogenetic structure across multiple forest dynamics plots: a mega-phylogeny approach

作者：David L. Erickson, F. Andrew Jones, Nathan G. Swenson, Nancai Pei, Norman A. Bourg, Wenna Chen, Stuart J. Davies, Xue‐Jun Ge, Zhanqing Hao, Robert W. Howe, Chun‐Lin Huang, Andrew J. Larson, Shawn K. Y. Lum, James A. Lutz, Keping Ma, Madhava Meegaskumbura, Xiangcheng Mi, John D. Parker, I. Fang-Sun, S. Joseph Wright‬, Amy Wolf, W. Ye, Dingliang Xing, Jess K. Zimmerman, W. John Kress · 发表于：Frontiers in Genetics · 年份：2014 · DOI：10.3389/fgene.2014.00358 · 被引用次数：93 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Plant and animal studies、Forest Ecology and Biodiversity Studies

Forest dynamics plots, which now span longitudes, latitudes, and habitat types across the globe, offer unparalleled insights into the ecological and evolutionary processes that determine how species are assembled into communities. Understanding phylogenetic relationships among species in a community has become an important component of assessing assembly processes. However, the application of evolutionary information to questions in community ecology has been limited in large part by the lack of accurate estimates of phylogenetic relationships among individual species found within communities, and is particularly limiting in comparisons between communities. Therefore, streamlining and maximizing the information content of these community phylogenies is a priority. To test the viability and advantage of a multi-community phylogeny, we constructed a multi-plot mega-phylogeny of 1347 species of trees across 15 forest dynamics plots in the ForestGEO network using DNA barcode sequence data (rbcL, matK, and psbA-trnH) and compared community phylogenies for each individual plot with respect to support for topology and branch lengths, which affect evolutionary inference of community processes. The levels of taxonomic differentiation across the phylogeny were examined by quantifying the frequency of resolved nodes throughout. In addition, three phylogenetic distance (PD) metrics that are commonly used to infer assembly processes were estimated for each plot [PD, Mean Phylogenetic Dist...