Reconstructing Ecological Niche Evolution via Ancestral State Reconstruction with Uncertainty Incorporated
DOI10.5281/zenodo.4716515Zenodo4716515MaRDI QIDQ6677174FDOQ6677174
Dataset published at Zenodo repository.
Narayani Barve, Peter Hosner, Marlon E. Cobos, Carlos Muñoz, Jacob C. Cooper, Hannah L. Owens, A. Townsend Peterson, Vivian Ribiero, Vijay Barve, Abdallah Samy, Erin Saupe
Publication date: 23 April 2021
Reconstructing ecological niche evolution can provide insight into the biogeography and diversification of evolving lineages. However, comparative phylogenetic methods can infer the history of ecological niche evolution inaccurately because (1) species' niches are often poorly characterized; and (2) 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: Icterus spp.). 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 called nichevol.
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