Space versus phylogeny: disentangling phylogenetic and spatial signals in comparative data

Area of Science:

• Evolutionary biology
• Comparative genomics
• Biogeography

Background:

• Species trait variation arises from environmental and historical influences.
• Understanding the interplay between phylogenetic and spatial factors is crucial for evolutionary studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce a novel statistical framework for estimating the relative contributions of spatial and phylogenetic factors to trait variation.
• To provide a unified approach for analyzing comparative trait data.

Main Methods:

• The method modifies the variance of phylogenetically independent contrasts.
• It incorporates spatial occurrences and phylogenetic relationships of species.
• The approach was applied to body mass, geographical range, and environmental temperature in mammals.

Main Results:

• Body size showed strong phylogenetic autocorrelation.
• Environmental temperature and geographical range exhibited significant spatial dependence.
• The method successfully differentiated these varying signals across traits.

Conclusions:

• The developed method effectively quantifies the relative impacts of space and phylogeny on species traits.
• This framework can be extended to explore diverse evolutionary and spatial models.