Niche Evolution of South American Trees and its Consequences

南美树木的生态位演化及其后果

• 批准号: NE/I027797/1
• 负责人: R. Toby Pennington
• 金额: $ 40.38万
• 依托单位: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2012 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FI027797%2F1
• 关键词: Niche; Evolution; South; American; Trees

Summary (for general audience, 4000 characters)Tropical plant communities are famed for their high diversity but we still have little knowledge about the evolutionary processes that have created wide differences in the composition and species richness of different kinds of tropical ecosystem. Understanding these processes is of fundamental and practical importance - for example, planning conservation strategies increasingly uses information on evolutionary relationships as part of prioritising decisions about individual species. However, for tropical plants communities, sufficiently large datasets based on DNA sequences are only just beginning to reveal the evolutionary relationships between species. As a result, the implications of threats, either through land-use or climate change, for the conservation of the evolutionary history of these communities remains almost entirely unknown. Our research will take advantage of impressive existing data of tree inventories, covering more than 1000 sites in three major biomes in tropical South America: rain forests, dry forests and savannas. We will link these data with new information on the evolutionary relationships of all genera, and all species of the legume family, which is dominant in all three biomes, using DNA sequence data. A genus-level evolutionary tree will allow us to make analyses deep into evolutionary time, whereas a species-level legume tree will give a view of recent evolution. We will investigate how many times lineages of trees have switched between the different biomes, which will deliver important knowledge for conservation and future studies of evolutionary diversification. If lineages have rarely switched between biomes, then each biome will contain a distinct subset of evolutionary diversity, and destruction of a single biome could wipe out an entire part of evolutionary history.Such scenarios of the destruction of an entire biome are not unlikely. One important aspect of this proposal is that it will not focus solely on the rain forests of the Amazon Basin, but will also consider the forgotten biomes of tree-dominated savannas and tropical dry forests. These formations deserve greater attention from scientists and conservationists because they are species-rich, and have suffered greater destruction - more than 70% of the original two million km2 of the Brazilian savannas have been destroyed, whereas c. 70% of Amazonia is intact. Tropical dry forests, of which less than 5% remain in many areas, are the most threatened tropical forest type in the world. We believe our research will highlight the importance and plight of tropical dry forests and savannas, characterised by many decision makers and commentators as worthless - fair game for destruction if this might save rain forest areas - exemplified by a recent leader in the Economist magazine (28.08.2010; Brazil's agricultural miracle: Plant the plains, save the forests; http://www.economist.com/node/16889019).In addition to biome switching, we will also investigate how adaptations to specific climatic and soil conditions have changed during evolution in these groups. This work will enable us to understand the processes driving the biome shifts we observe. In addition, these analyses may help to understand how climate change will affect communities: for example, if changes in climatic preferences of species have occurred infrequently related species will tend to have similar climatic niches, and whole groups of related species might be vulnerable to extinction from particular trajectories of climate change.The final stage of our study will examine the implications for loss of evolutionary diversity in different biomes under projected scenarios of climate and land-use change. Our results will be of relevance to conservation planning by national government agencies in South America and international organisations, such as the WWF, involved in setting priorities for tropical conservation.

热带植物群落以其高度的多样性而闻名，但我们仍然对不同类型的热带生态系统的组成和物种丰富度产生巨大差异的进化过程知之甚少。了解这些过程具有根本和实际的重要性-例如，规划保护策略越来越多地使用进化关系的信息作为对单个物种进行优先级排序的决定的一部分。然而，对于热带植物群落，基于DNA序列的足够大的数据集才刚刚开始揭示物种之间的进化关系。因此，威胁的影响，无论是通过土地使用或气候变化，对这些社区的进化历史的保护仍然几乎完全未知。我们的研究将利用令人印象深刻的现有树木清单数据，涵盖南美洲热带三大生物群落的1000多个地点：雨林，干燥森林和稀树草原。我们将使用DNA序列数据将这些数据与所有属和豆科所有物种的进化关系的新信息联系起来，豆科在所有三个生物群中占主导地位。属级进化树将使我们能够深入到进化时间进行分析，而种级豆科植物树将提供最近进化的视图。我们将调查树木的谱系在不同生物群落之间切换了多少次，这将为保护和未来的进化多样化研究提供重要的知识。如果谱系很少在生物群系之间转换，那么每个生物群系都将包含一个独特的进化多样性子集，单个生物群系的破坏可能会抹去整个进化历史的一部分。这项建议的一个重要方面是，它将不仅关注亚马逊盆地的雨林，而且还将考虑被遗忘的树木为主的稀树草原和热带干燥森林的生物群落。这些地层值得科学家和自然资源保护主义者给予更多的关注，因为它们物种丰富，并且遭受了更大的破坏-巴西原始200万平方公里的热带草原中有70%以上已经被破坏，而c。亚马逊河流域70%的地区完好无损。热带干旱森林是世界上最受威胁的热带森林类型，在许多地区，热带干旱森林的比例不到5%。我们相信，我们的研究将突出热带干旱森林和稀树草原的重要性和困境，许多决策者和评论员认为这些森林毫无价值--如果可以拯救雨林地区，就可以进行破坏--最近《经济学人》杂志的一位领导人就是例证（28.08.2010;巴西的农业奇迹：种植平原，拯救森林; http：//www.economist.com/node/16889019）。除了生物群落转换，我们还将研究在这些群体的进化过程中，对特定气候和土壤条件的适应是如何变化的。这项工作将使我们能够理解驱动我们观察到的生物群落变化的过程。此外，这些分析可能有助于了解气候变化将如何影响社区：例如，如果物种的气候偏好变化很少发生，则相关物种将倾向于具有相似的气候生态位，以及整个相关物种群体可能很容易因特定的气候变化轨迹而灭绝。我们研究的最后阶段将研究不同物种的进化多样性丧失的影响。气候和土地利用变化预测情景下的生物群落。我们的研究结果将与南美国家政府机构和世界自然基金会等国际组织的保护规划有关，这些组织参与制定热带保护的优先事项。

项目成果

Effects of Quaternary climatic fluctuations on the distribution of Neotropical savanna tree species

• DOI: 10.1111/ecog.01860
• 发表时间: 2017-03-01
• 期刊: ECOGRAPHY
• 影响因子: 5.9
• 作者: Bueno, Marcelo Leandro;Pennington, R. Toby;de Oliveira-Filho, Ary Teixeira
• 通讯作者: de Oliveira-Filho, Ary Teixeira

The environmental triangle of the Cerrado Domain: Ecological factors driving shifts in tree species composition between forests and savannas

• DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.12969
• 发表时间: 2018-09-01
• 期刊: JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY
• 影响因子: 5.5
• 作者: Bueno, Marcelo Leandro;Dexter, Kyle G.;de Oliveira-Filho, Ary Teixeira
• 通讯作者: de Oliveira-Filho, Ary Teixeira

Consistent, small effects of treefall disturbances on the composition and diversity of four Amazonian forests.

• DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.12529
• 发表时间: 2016-03
• 期刊: The Journal of ecology
• 作者: Baker TR;Vela Díaz DM;Chama Moscoso V;Navarro G;Monteagudo A;Pinto R;Cangani K;Fyllas NM;Lopez Gonzalez G;Laurance WF;Lewis SL;Lloyd J;Ter Steege H;Terborgh JW;Phillips OL
• 通讯作者: Phillips OL

Sensitivity of South American tropical forests to an extreme climate anomaly

• DOI: 10.1038/s41558-023-01776-4
• 发表时间: 2023-09-04
• 期刊: NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE
• 影响因子: 30.7
• 作者: Bennett, Amy C.;Rodrigues de Sousa, Thaiane;Phillips, Oliver L.
• 通讯作者: Phillips, Oliver L.

Evolutionary heritage influences Amazon tree ecology.

• DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2016.1587
• 发表时间: 2016-12-14
• 期刊: Proceedings. Biological sciences
• 作者: Coelho de Souza F;Dexter KG;Phillips OL;Brienen RJ;Chave J;Galbraith DR;Lopez Gonzalez G;Monteagudo Mendoza A;Pennington RT;Poorter L;Alexiades M;Álvarez-Dávila E;Andrade A;Aragão LE;Araujo-Murakami A;Arets EJ;Aymard C GA;Baraloto C;Barroso JG;Bonal D;Boot RG;Camargo JL;Comiskey JA;Valverde FC;de Camargo PB;Di Fiore A;Elias F;Erwin TL;Feldpausch TR;Ferreira L;Fyllas NM;Gloor E;Herault B;Herrera R;Higuchi N;Honorio Coronado EN;Killeen TJ;Laurance WF;Laurance S;Lloyd J;Lovejoy TE;Malhi Y;Maracahipes L;Marimon BS;Marimon-Junior BH;Mendoza C;Morandi P;Neill DA;Vargas PN;Oliveira EA;Lenza E;Palacios WA;Peñuela-Mora MC;Pipoly JJ 3rd;Pitman NC;Prieto A;Quesada CA;Ramirez-Angulo H;Rudas A;Ruokolainen K;Salomão RP;Silveira M;Stropp J;Ter Steege H;Thomas-Caesar R;van der Hout P;van der Heijden GM;van der Meer PJ;Vasquez RV;Vieira SA;Vilanova E;Vos VA;Wang O;Young KR;Zagt RJ;Baker TR
• 通讯作者: Baker TR