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High elevation bird communities in the Swiss Alps exhibit reduced fecundity and lifespan independently of phylogenetic effects
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Orientador(es)
Resumo(s)
The merging of community ecology and phylogenetic biology allows us to link broader
evolutionary processes to local ecological processes, thereby increasing our understanding of community assembly. A recurrent way to test how species assemblages respond to
diferent abiotic conditions and evaluate the role of evolutionary constraints in community
assembly is through using environmental gradients as natural treatments. Here, we combine phylogenetic and trait-based methods to evaluate how the phylogenetic diversity and
composition of bird assemblages and their community-weighted traits vary along an elevational gradient in the Swiss Alps. For this purpose, we used four life-history traits considered to be key indicators of individual species response to environmental changes: clutch
size, number of breeding attempts, dispersal capacity and lifespan. Controlling for phylogeny, we determined whether environmental flters (elevation, habitat type) act on these
traits independently of the level of relatedness among species. We found that phylogenetic
dispersion decreases with elevation, but the signature of phylogenetic clustering was weak.
Phylogenetic fuzzy weighting showed that the distribution of bird species across plots was
related to the two environmental gradients; nonetheless, such infuence was not determined
by the phylogenetic relationships in either case. That is, there are no specifc clades associated with particular elevation or habitat types. We also found that high elevation communities around the treeline were composed of species with lower reproductive rates, reduced
lifespan, and lower dispersal capacity, which would make them less resilient to environmental change. Although traits showed moderate phylogenetic signal, only the lifespan was
phylogenetically structured. In the remaining cases, the trait-environment association was
not mediated by the phylogenetic relationships among taxa. Our study indicates that evolutionary constraints do not represent a signifcant driver of community assembly in Alpine
bird communities and support the notion that phylogeny may often not be a good proxy for
traits subject to environmental fltering.
Descrição
Palavras-chave
Alpine communities Clutch size Elevational gradient Environmental fltering Life‐history traits Lifespan Mountains Phylogenetic composition Switzerland Trait‐environment
Contexto Educativo
Citação
García-Navas, V., Sattler, T., Schmid, H. et al. High elevation bird communities in the Swiss Alps exhibit reduced fecundity and lifespan independently of phylogenetic effects. Biodivers Conserv 30, 991–1010 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-021-02127-5
Editora
Springer