Coupling eco‐evolutionary mechanisms with deep‐time environmental dynamics to understand biodiversity patterns

作者：Oskar Hagen · 发表于：Ecography · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.1111/ecog.06132 · 被引用次数：44 · 研究领域：Species Distribution and Climate Change、Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Evolution and Genetic Dynamics

Pioneer naturalists such as Whewell, Lyell, Humboldt, Darwin and Wallace acknowledged the interactions between ecological and evolutionary forces, as well as the roles of continental movement, mountain formation and climate variations, in shaping biodiversity patterns. Recent developments in computer modelling and paleo‐environmental reconstruction have made it possible for scientists to study in silico how biodiversity emerges from eco‐evolutionary and environmental dynamic processes and their interactions. Simulating emergent biodiversity enables the experimentation of multiple interconnected hypotheses in a largely fragmented scientific landscape, with the final objective of successfully approximating natural mechanisms (i.e. hypothetical spatio–temporally unrestricted generalizations that hold across multiple empirical biodiversity patterns). This new interdisciplinary approach opens unprecedented scientific pathways, facilitating the communication and contemplation of causal implications of complex eco‐evolutionary and environmental interactions. In this review I provide a comprehensive overview of the available population‐based spatially explicit mechanistic eco‐evolutionary models (MEEMs) that rely on paleo‐environmental reconstructions, critically discussing their relevance and limitations for our understanding of biodiversity. To achieve this, I first introduce diverse biodiversity models and contextualize MEEMs. Second, I define MEEMs and synthesize the major insigh...