Local phylogenetic signal in Dutch habitats and other data from Prinzing et al New Phytologist 2021

The functioning of present ecosystems reflects deep evolutionary history
of locally co-occurring species if their functional traits show high
phylogenetic signal (PS). However, we do not understand what drives local
PS. We hypothesize that local PS is high in undisturbed and stressful
habitats – either due to ongoing local assembly of species that maintained
ancestral traits, or past evolutionary maintenance of ancestral traits
within habitat species-pools, or both. We quantified PS and diversity of
10 traits within 6704 local plant communities across 38 Dutch habitat
types differing in disturbance or stress. Mean local PS varied 50-fold
among habitat types, often independently of phylogenetic or trait
diversity. Mean local PS decreased with disturbance but showed no
consistent relationship to stress. Mean local PS exceeded species-pool PS,
reflecting non-random subsampling from the pool. Disturbance or stress
related more strongly to mean local than to species-pool PS. Disturbed
habitats harbour species with evolutionary divergent trait values, likely
driven by ongoing, local assembly of species: environmental fluctuations
might maintain different trait values within lineages through an
evolutionary storage effect. If functional traits do not reflect
phylogeny, ecosystem functioning might not be contingent on the presence
of particular lineages, and lineages might establish evolutionarily novel
interactions.