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Phylogenetic patterns predicting variations in bark‐stripping by sika deer
Author(s) -
Kusumoto Buntarou,
Kubota Yasuhiro
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
the journal of wildlife management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.94
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1937-2817
pISSN - 0022-541X
DOI - 10.1002/jwmg.782
Subject(s) - phylogenetic tree , biology , bark (sound) , ecology , clade , phylogenetics , herbivore , biochemistry , gene
Phylogenetic signal of species traits is a potentially powerful tool in the conservation of biodiversity and wildlife management. To develop a predictor for evaluating deer foraging risk in forest ecosystems, we examined the phylogenetic patterns in susceptibility to bark‐stripping by Cervus nippon across the Japanese archipelago. We tested the variance of phylogenetically independent contrasts among bark‐stripped ratios of 180 tree species, and found a significant phylogenetic signal, i.e., phylogenetically closely related species had similar bark‐stripped ratios. To assess evolutionary processes generating clade‐specific patterns of bark‐stripped ratios, we evaluated the strength of phylogenetic signal by using the K ‐statistics. The K ‐statistics were < 1, demonstrating that bark‐stripped ratio was not tightly conserved in particular clades, i.e., woody plant traits related to palatability or anti‐herbivore defense may be labile among families or genera. Based on phylogenetic relationships and bark‐stripped ratios among species, we examined the vulnerability to deer foraging at the tree species assemblage level. We estimated the bark‐stripped ratios for all Japanese woody plants (928 species) by phylogenetic imputation, and mapped the geographic pattern of the vulnerability at the 10 × 10‐km grid cell level. Compared with taxonomic‐based assessment focusing on 180 tree species with the records of bark‐stripping, the phylogenetic‐based vulnerability map showed spatially heterogeneous patterns. Our results demonstrate that the phylogenetic pattern in the interspecific variation of bark‐stripped ratios serves as an indicator for better understanding the vulnerability of forests to deer foraging, and has 2 implications for the management of the deer population. First, phylogenetic constraint of selective foraging could be a driver that causes aggregated degradation of forest ecosystems containing palatable plant lineages for deer. Second, evolutionary lability of palatability or anti‐herbivore defense across various tree families may be an important factor for the geographic spread of foraging damage in forests harboring taxonomically different species. © 2014 The Wildlife Society.