Climatic refugia and reduced extinction correlate with underdispersion in mammals and birds in Africa

Macroevolutionary patterns, often inferred from metrics of community relatedness, are often used to ascertain major evolutionary processes shaping communities. These patterns have been shown to be informative of biogeographic barriers, of habitat suitability and invasibility (especially with regards to environmental filtering), and of regions that function as evolutionary cradles (i.e., sources of diversification) or museums (i.e., regions of reduced extinction). Here, we analysed continental datasets of mammal and bird distributions to identify primary drivers of community evolution on the African continent for mostly-endothermic vertebrates. We find that underdispersion (i.e., relatively low phylogenetic diversity compared to species richness) closely correlates with specific ecoregions that have been identified as climatic refugia in the literature, regardless of whether these specific regions have been touted as cradles or museums. Using theoretical models of identical communities t...

常通过群落亲缘关系（community relatedness）指标推断得到的宏演化模式（macroevolutionary patterns），常被用于明确塑造群落的核心演化过程。已有研究证实，此类模式可为生物地理屏障、生境适宜性与可入侵性（尤其涉及环境过滤（environmental filtering）过程时），以及兼具演化摇篮（evolutionary cradles，即物种多样化源头）或演化博物馆（evolutionary museums，即灭绝速率较低的区域）功能的区域提供有效信息。本研究针对以恒温脊椎动物（mostly-endothermic vertebrates）为主的类群，整合非洲大陆的哺乳动物与鸟类分布大陆级数据集，旨在明确非洲大陆群落演化的主要驱动因素。研究结果显示，系统发育聚集不足（underdispersion，即相较于物种丰富度（species richness），系统发育多样性（phylogenetic diversity）相对偏低）与文献中已被认定为气候避难所（climatic refugia）的特定生态区（ecoregions）密切相关，而无论这些区域此前是否被冠以演化摇篮或演化博物馆的名号。本研究采用相同群落的理论模型t...