TY - JOUR
T1 - Common ancestry is a poor predictor of competitive traits in freshwater green algae
AU - Narwani, Anita
AU - Alexandrou, Markos A.
AU - Herrin, James
AU - Vouaux, Alaina
AU - Zhou, Charles
AU - Oakley, Todd H.
AU - Cardinale, Bradley J.
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank C. Hampton-Miller for thoughtful discussions and for providing useful R scripts that helped with the evolutionary model fitting. This study was supported by the US National Science Foundation’s DIMENSIONS of Biodiversity program in a grant to BJC (DEB-1046121) and THO (DEB-1046121).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Narwani et al.
PY - 2015/9/8
Y1 - 2015/9/8
N2 - Phytoplankton species traits have been used to successfully predict the outcome of competition, but these traits are notoriously laborious to measure. If these traits display a phylogenetic signal, phylogenetic distance (PD) can be used as a proxy for trait variation. We provide the first investigation of the degree of phylogenetic signal in traits related to competition in freshwater green phytoplankton. We measured 17 traits related to competition and tested whether they displayed a phylogenetic signal across a molecular phylogeny of 59 species of green algae. We also assessed the fit of five models of trait evolution to trait variation across the phylogeny. There was no significant phylogenetic signal for 13 out of 17 ecological traits. For 7 traits, a non-phylogenetic model provided the best fit. For another 7 traits, a phylogenetic model was selected, but parameter values indicated that trait variation evolved recently, diminishing the importance of common ancestry. This study suggests that traits related to competition in freshwater green algae are not generally well-predicted by patterns of common ancestry. We discuss the mechanisms by which the link between phylogenetic distance and phenotypic differentiation may be broken.
AB - Phytoplankton species traits have been used to successfully predict the outcome of competition, but these traits are notoriously laborious to measure. If these traits display a phylogenetic signal, phylogenetic distance (PD) can be used as a proxy for trait variation. We provide the first investigation of the degree of phylogenetic signal in traits related to competition in freshwater green phytoplankton. We measured 17 traits related to competition and tested whether they displayed a phylogenetic signal across a molecular phylogeny of 59 species of green algae. We also assessed the fit of five models of trait evolution to trait variation across the phylogeny. There was no significant phylogenetic signal for 13 out of 17 ecological traits. For 7 traits, a non-phylogenetic model provided the best fit. For another 7 traits, a phylogenetic model was selected, but parameter values indicated that trait variation evolved recently, diminishing the importance of common ancestry. This study suggests that traits related to competition in freshwater green algae are not generally well-predicted by patterns of common ancestry. We discuss the mechanisms by which the link between phylogenetic distance and phenotypic differentiation may be broken.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0137085
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0137085
M3 - Article
C2 - 26348482
AN - SCOPUS:84944351153
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 10
JO - PloS one
JF - PloS one
IS - 9
M1 - e0137085
ER -