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Niche evolution in Australian terrestrial mammals? Clarifying scale-dependencies in phylogenetic and functional drivers of co-occurrence

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Abstract

Interactive forces between competition and habitat filtering drive many biogeographic patterns over evolutionary time scales. However, the responsiveness of assemblages to these two forces is highly influenced by spatial scale, forming complex patterns of niche separation. We explored these spatial dependencies by quantifying the influence of phylogeny and functional traits in shaping present day native terrestrial mammal assemblages at multiple scales, principally by identifying the spatial scales at which niche evolution operates. We modelled the distribution of 53 native terrestrial mammal species across New South Wales, Australia. Using predicted distributions, we estimated the range overlap between each pair of species at increasing grain sizes (~0.8, 5.1, 20, 81, 506, 2,025, 8,100 km2). We employed a decision tree to identify how interactions among functional traits and phylogenetic relatedness translated to levels of sympatry at increasing spatial scales. We found that Australian terrestrial mammals displayed phylogenetic over-dispersion that was inversely related to spatial scale, suggesting that ecological processes were more influential than biogeographic sympatry patterns in defining assemblages of species. While the contribution of phylogenetic relatedness to patterns of co-occurrence decreased as spatial scale increased, the reverse was true for habitat preferences. At the same time, functional traits also operated at different scales, as dietary preferences dominated at local spatial scales (<10 km2) while body mass has a stronger effect at larger spatial scales. Our findings show that ecological and evolutionary processes operate at different scales and that Australian terrestrial mammals diverged slower along their micro-scale niche compared to their macro-scale niche. By combining phylogenetic and niche methods through the modelling of species distributions, we assessed whether specific traits were related to a particular niche. More importantly, conducting multi-scale spatial analysis avoids categorical assignment of traits-to-niches, providing a clearer relationship between traits and a species ecological niche and a more precise scaling for the axes of niche evolution.

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Acknowledgments

This research was part of Australian Research Council Linkage Project LP0774833 titled “Managing for ecosystem change in the GBMWHA”. We thank the following partner organizations for their support: the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute, the Blue Mountains City Council, the New South Wales Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECCW), the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries and the Hawkesbury-Nepean Catchment and Management Authority. GB was supported by an Australian Postgraduate Award. We are grateful to DECCW for the provision of Atlas data. We thank Evan Webster for providing valuable technical support. We are especially thankful for the anonymous comments from two anonymous reviewers and the Editor in Chief Prof. John A Endler.

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  1. Australian Wetlands, Rivers, and Landscapes Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, 2052, Australia

    Gilad Bino, Daniel Ramp & Richard T. Kingsford

  2. School of the Environment, University of Technology Sydney, Broadway, NSW, 2007, Australia

    Daniel Ramp

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Bino, G., Ramp, D. & Kingsford, R.T. Niche evolution in Australian terrestrial mammals? Clarifying scale-dependencies in phylogenetic and functional drivers of co-occurrence. Evol Ecol 27, 1159–1173 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-013-9631-5

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