Unifying ecology and macroevolution with individual-based theory

Authored by James Rosindell, Luke J Harmon, Rampal S Etienne

Date Published: 2015

DOI: 10.1111/ele.12430

Sponsors: United Kingdom Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)

Platforms: C++

Model Documentation: Other Narrative

Model Code URLs: Model code not found

Abstract

A contemporary goal in both ecology and evolutionary biology is to develop theory that transcends the boundary between the two disciplines, to understand phenomena that cannot be explained by either field in isolation. This is challenging because macroevolution typically uses lineage-based models, whereas ecology often focuses on individual organisms. Here, we develop a new parsimonious individual-based theory by adding mild selection to the neutral theory of biodiversity. We show that this model generates realistic phylogenies showing a slowdown in diversification and also improves on the ecological predictions of neutral theory by explaining the occurrence of very common species. Moreover, we find the distribution of individual fitness changes over time, with average fitness increasing at a pace that depends positively on community size. Consequently, large communities tend to produce fitter species than smaller communities. These findings have broad implications beyond biodiversity theory, potentially impacting, for example, invasion biology and paleontology.

Tags

Evolution Biodiversity Community ecology Tropical forests Protracted speciation Niche Species abundance distributions Unified-neutral-theory Numbers add Red queen