Open AccessPhylogenetic structure of angiosperm trees in local forest communities along latitudinal and elevational gradients in eastern North America
Author(s) -
Qian Hong,
Zhang Jian,
Sandel Brody,
Jin Yi
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
ecography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.973
H-Index - 128
eISSN - 1600-0587
pISSN - 0906-7590
DOI - 10.1111/ecog.04873
Subject(s) - phylogenetic tree , ecology , seasonality , biology , latitude , taxon , environmental gradient , precipitation , geography , biochemistry , geodesy , habitat , meteorology , gene
Latitudinal and elevational gradients both represent thermal gradients. Assessing the consistency of the relationships between phylogenetic structure and climate between latitudinal and elevational gradients can provide insight into the mechanisms driving assembly of species from regional pools into local assemblages. The aim of this study is to compare patterns of phylogenetic structure measures for angiosperm tree species between latitudinal and elevational gradients, using a dataset of angiosperm tree species in 14 092 forest plots in eastern North America. We assessed whether these two gradients produce similar relationships between climate and phylogenetic structure, hypothesizing that they should differ in magnitude but not direction. We used correlation and regression analyses to assess the relation of measures of phylogenetic structure to elevation, latitude and climatic variables, which included minimum temperature, temperature seasonality, annual precipitation and precipitation seasonality. We found that 1) phylogenetic relatedness of angiosperm trees increases with decreasing temperature along both latitudinal and elevational gradients but the relationship between phylogenetic relatedness and temperature is steeper for elevational gradients than for latitudinal gradients; 2) the tip‐weighted metric of phylogenetic relatedness (nearest taxon index) is more strongly correlated with climatic variables than the basal‐weighted metric of phylogenetic relatedness (net relatedness index); 3) winter cold temperature exerts a stronger effect on community assembly of angiosperm trees than does temperature seasonality. These results suggest that winter cold temperature, rather than temperature seasonality, drives phylogenetic structure of plants in local forest communities, and that species distributions along elevational gradients are more in equilibrium with temperature, compared with those along latitudinal gradients.