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The ghost of hybridization past: niche pre‐emption is not the only explanation of apparent monophyly in island endemics
Author(s) -
HERBEN TOMÁ?Š?,
SUDA JAN,
MUNCLINGER PAVEL
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.452
H-Index - 181
eISSN - 1365-2745
pISSN - 0022-0477
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2745.2005.01005.x
Subject(s) - monophyly , niche , biology , ecological niche , endemism , ecology , phylogeography , evolutionary biology , phylogenetics , clade , gene , habitat , biochemistry
Summary1 Published molecular phylogenies show that many plant groups in the Canary Islands are monophyletic despite the fact that the short distance between the islands and Africa should have led to many independent colonization events. 2 Low establishment rates of later migrants owing to niche pre‐emption by earlier, already established, colonists could explain these patterns. The apparent monophyly is, however, also compatible with multiple colonizations, with later colonizers making only limited contributions to the total gene pool (and therefore being undetected in the molecular phylogeny) or being wiped out by stochastic processes. 3 Experimental evidence for niche pre‐emption and species‐specific interactions in plants is weak, with survival and establishment of a newly immigrant species depending on the overall composition of the community, rather than on the presence of a particular ‘ecologically similar’ species. 4 Although niche pre‐emption might have contributed to the observed patterns of monophyly, we do not think that phylogeographical data from Macaronesia can be taken as evidence for its action in the geological past.