The ecological dynamics of clade diversification and community assembly

Clades diversify in an ecological context, but most macroevolutionary
models do not directly encapsulate ecological mechanisms that influence speciation and extinction. A data set of 245 chordate, arthropod, mollusk, and magnoliophyte phylogenies had
a majority of clades that showed rapid lineage accumulation early
with a slowing more recently, whereas a small but significantminority
showed accelerated lineage accumulation in their recent histories.
Previous analyses have demonstrated that macroevolutionary birthdeath
models can replicate the pattern of slowing lineage accumulation
only by a strong decrease in speciation rate with increasing
species richness and extinction rate held extremely low or absent. In
contrast, the metacommunity model presented here could generate
the full range of patterns seen in the real phylogenies by simply
manipulating the degree of ecological differentiation of new species
at the time of speciation. Specifically, the metacommunity model
pre...