Global patterns and climatic determinants of phylogenetic structure of regional fern floras

Knowledge of relationships between phylogenetic structure of a biological assemblage and ecological factors that drive the variation of phylogenetic structure among regions is crucial for understanding the causes of variation in taxonomic composition and richness among regions, but this knowledge is lacking for the global flora of ferns. Here, we fill this critical knowledge gap. We divided the globe into 392 geographic units on land, collated species lists of ferns for each geographic unit, and used different phylogenetic metrics (tip- vs basal-weighted) reflecting different evolutionary depths to quantify phylogenetic structure. We then related taxonomic and phylogenetic structure metrics to six climatic variables for ferns as a whole and for two groups of ferns (old clades vs polypods) reflecting different evolutionary histories across the globe and within each continental region. We found that when old clades and polypods were considered separately, temperature-related variables explained more variation in these metrics than did precipitation-related variables in both groups. When analyses were conducted for continental regions separately, this pattern holds in most cases. Climate extremes have a stronger relationship with phylogenetic structure of ferns than does climate seasonality. Climatic variables explained more variation in phylogenetic structure at deeper evolutionary depths.