Neutral biogeography and the evolution of climatic niches.

ABSTRACT: Recent debate on whether climatic niches are conserved through time has focused on how phylogenetic niche conservatism can be measured by deviations from a Brownian motion model of evolutionary change. However, there has been no evaluation of this methodological approach. In particular, the fact that climatic niches are usually obtained from distribution data and are thus heavily influenced by biogeographic factors has largely been overlooked. Our main objective here was to test whether patterns of climatic niche evolution that are frequently observed might arise from neutral dynamics rather than from adaptive scenarios. We developed a model inspired by neutral biodiversity theory, where individuals disperse, compete, and undergo speciation independently of climate. We then sampled the cli

SUBMITTER: Boucher FC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4001461 | biostudies-literature | 2014 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature