Phylogenetic Structure of Woody-Plant Communities

木本植物群落的系统发育结构[j]；自然界中发现的生物生态群落通常被视为独立物种的集合。然而，最近系统发育生物学家在理解“生命之树”方面取得的巨大进展意味着生态学家现在可以在其群落中研究物种之间的进化关系。了解这种系统发育结构也使生态学家能够检测群落中物种成员的组织过程，从而为了解物种丰富的系统提供了一个强大的新工具。在拟议的研究中，将开发软件工具来组装和分析群落系统发育结构，并将应用于婆罗洲濒临灭绝的雨林树木群落和加利福尼亚的植物群。还将对世界上其他植物群落的系统发育结构进行比较调查。本研究将促进进化生物学与群落生态学的紧密结合。

Phylogenetic Structure of Woody-Plant CommunitiesWebb, Ackerly, & Donoghue; NSF proposal 0212873The ecological communities of organisms found in nature have usually been treated as collections of independent species. However, the great advances made recently by phylogenetic biologists in understanding the "tree of life" mean that ecologists can now examine the evolutionary relationships among the species in their communities. Knowing this phylogenetic structure also enables ecologists to detect the processes organizing species membership in the communities, and thus provides a powerful new tool to understand species-rich systems. In the proposed research software tools will be developed for assembling and analyzing community phylogenetic structure, and will be applied to an endangered, rain forest tree community in Borneo, and to the Californian flora. A comparative survey of the phylogenetic structure of other plant communities around the world will also be performed. The proposed research will promote a closer integration of evolutionary biology and community ecology..