Are species’ responses to global change predicted by past niche evolution?

Predicting how and when adaptive evolution might rescue species from global change, and integrating this process into tools of biodiversity forecasting, has now become an urgent task. Here we explored whether recent population trends of species can be explained by their past rate of niche evolution, which can be inferred from increasingly available phylogenetic and niche data. We examined the assemblage of 409 European bird species for which estimates of demographic trends between 1970 and 2000 are available, along with a species-level phylogeny and data on climatic, habitat, and trophic niches. We found that species’ proneness to demographic decline is associated with slow evolution of the habitat niche in the past, in addition to certain current-day life history and ecological traits. A similar result was found at a higher taxonomic level, where families prone to decline have had a history of slower evolution of climatic and habitat niches. Our results support the view that niche cons...预测适应性演化（adaptive evolution）如何、何时可帮助物种抵御全球变化，并将该过程整合入生物多样性预测工具中，现已成为一项紧迫的研究任务。本研究旨在探究物种近期的种群动态趋势是否可通过其过往的生态位（niche）演化速率得到解释——该演化速率可从日益丰富的系统发育（phylogenetic）与生态位数据中推断得到。我们分析了409种欧洲鸟类的数据集，这些物种均拥有1970至2000年间的种群动态趋势估算值，同时具备物种级系统发育树（species-level phylogeny），以及气候、栖息地与营养生态位（trophic niche）相关数据。研究发现，除部分现生生活史特征（life history trait）与生态特征外，物种的种群衰退倾向与其过往栖息地生态位演化速率缓慢显著相关。在更高的分类阶元（taxonomic level）水平上也得到了类似结果：易发生种群衰退的鸟类科类群，其气候与栖息地生态位的演化历史均较为缓慢。我们的研究结果支持“生态位...