Data from: The contribution of rare species to community phylogenetic diversity across a global network of forest plots

Niche differentiation has been proposed as an explanation for rarity in
species assemblages. Testing this hypothesis requires quantifying the
ecological similarity of species. This similarity can potentially be
estimated by using phylogenetic relatedness. In this study, we predicted
that if niche differentiation does explain the co-occurrence of rare and
common species, then rare species should contribute greatly to the overall
community phylogenetic diversity (PD), abundance will have phylogenetic
signal and that common and rare species will be phylogenetically
dissimilar. We tested these predictions by developing a novel method that
integrates species rank abundance distributions with phylogenetic trees
and trend analyses to examine the relative contribution of individual
species to the overall community PD. We then supplement this approach with
analyses of phylogenetic signal in abundances and measures of phylogenetic
similarity within and between rare and common species groups. We applied
this analytical approach to 15 long-term temperate and tropical forest
dynamics plots from around the world. We show that the niche
differentiation hypothesis is supported in six forests but is rejected in
nine forests, and that the three metrics utilized in this study each
provide unique but corroborating information regarding the phylogenetic
distribution of rarity in communities.