Data from: Modelling competition and dispersal in a statistical phylogeographic framework

Competition between organisms influences the processes governing the
colonization of new habitats. As a consequence, species or populations
arriving first at a suitable location may prevent secondary colonization.
While adaptation to environmental variables (e.g., temperature, altitude,
etc.) is essential, the presence or absence of certain species at a
particular location often depends on whether or not competing species
co-occur. For example, competition is thought to play an important role in
structuring mammalian communities assembly. It can also explain spatial
patterns of low genetic diversity following rapid colonization events or
the “progression rule” displayed by phylogenies of species found on
archipelagos. Despite the potential of competition to maintain populations
in isolation, past quantitative analyses have largely ignored it because
of the difficulty in designing adequate methods for assessing its impact.
We present here a new model that integrates competition and dispersal into
a Bayesian phylogeographic framework. Extensive simulations and analysis
of real data show that our approach clearly outperforms the traditional
Mantel test for detecting correlation between genetic and geographic
distances. But most importantly, we demonstrate that competition can be
detected with high sensitivity and specificity from the phylogenetic
analysis of genetic variation in space.