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Climate‐driven extinctions shape the phylogenetic structure of temperate tree floras
Author(s) -
Eiserhardt Wolf L.,
Borchsenius Finn,
Plum Christoffer M.,
Ordonez Alejandro,
Svenning JensChristian
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
ecology letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.852
H-Index - 265
eISSN - 1461-0248
pISSN - 1461-023X
DOI - 10.1111/ele.12409
Subject(s) - phylogenetic tree , extinction (optical mineralogy) , biology , phylogenetic diversity , ecology , taxon , climate change , extinction event , temperate forest , temperate climate , evolutionary biology , phylogenetics , paleontology , biological dispersal , population , gene , biochemistry , demography , sociology
When taxa go extinct, unique evolutionary history is lost. If extinction is selective, and the intrinsic vulnerabilities of taxa show phylogenetic signal, more evolutionary history may be lost than expected under random extinction. Under what conditions this occurs is insufficiently known. We show that late Cenozoic climate change induced phylogenetically selective regional extinction of northern temperate trees because of phylogenetic signal in cold tolerance, leading to significantly and substantially larger than random losses of phylogenetic diversity (PD). The surviving floras in regions that experienced stronger extinction are phylogenetically more clustered, indicating that non‐random losses of PD are of increasing concern with increasing extinction severity. Using simulations, we show that a simple threshold model of survival given a physiological trait with phylogenetic signal reproduces our findings. Our results send a strong warning that we may expect future assemblages to be phylogenetically and possibly functionally depauperate if anthropogenic climate change affects taxa similarly.