Interested to hear your opinions (beyond "all unmeasured traits" & teacher like textbook answers🧐): What does Phylogenetic diversity represents? See new study www.idiv.de/ecosystems-n... - ThreadSky

smartenwinter.bsky.social • 105 days ago

Interested to hear your opinions (beyond "all unmeasured traits" & teacher like textbook answers🧐):

What does Phylogenetic diversity represents?

See new study https://www.idiv.de/ecosystems-new-study-questions-common-assumption-about-biodiversity/

Comments

thesoupenjoyer.bsky.social•104 days ago

Im not a plant ecologist, but this feels somewhat intuitive in tropical ecosystems that have a lot more diversity in "recent" clades. Or at least that's my assumption. Consider highly diverse taxa like Euphorbia and Fabaceae. Functional diversity is pretty high even within a single genus in Euphorbs

cnmeynard.bsky.social•104 days ago

Reminds me of this old paper where we discussed this issue at length:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-185X.2012.00224.x

cnmeynard.bsky.social•104 days ago

While I agree with Andrés in that biodiversity has intrinsic value, "phylogenetic diversity" is not a biological entity that we can protect per se. It will always come down to protecting the species (whose populations we can manage) that constitute that phylogenetic diversity.

andresbaselga.bsky.social•104 days ago

Yes, but you can prioritize the sets of species (communities) accounting for larger values of phylogenetic diversity. Biological diversity results from an evolutionary process, so phylogenetic diversity (= accumulated evolutionary time) is in my opinion the best way to quantify biological diversity

cnmeynard.bsky.social•104 days ago

Prioritize areas based on functional and phylogenetic diversity, species based on their evolutionary and functional originality, but then always check that we are protecting the minimal area or population size that will allow persistance of individual species. We are probably saying the same thing.

andresbaselga.bsky.social•105 days ago

It does not represent anything, it is not a surrogate. It is the best way to measure biological diversity because it accounts for evolutionary heritage

smartenwinter.bsky.social•105 days ago

What does it mean Andres?

What can we learn from it?

Well, do we need to learn sth from it? Good question...

Still not convinced.

Evolutionary potential sound's appealing to me but is it?

andresbaselga.bsky.social•105 days ago

It has a very clear meaning. A forest with oak and beech is less diverse than a forest with oak and pine. Or, if a 20 million year old clade becomes extinct, diversity decreases more than if a 2 million year old clade is lost. Function can be recovered, but evolution is not repeatable

bobohara.bsky.social•105 days ago

I think that raised the question of why we should care about phylogenetic diversity. There’s a clear pragmatic case for functional diversity, but is a desire for phylogenetic diversity more than aesthetics?

smartenwinter.bsky.social•104 days ago

👆 Yes.

@andresbaselga.bsky.social made a point of the inherent evolutionary info measured as time as such, as a value we should care.

In a world of limited resources I'm still interested to hear why should conserve it beyond of its value itself.

jhortal.bsky.social•104 days ago

I think it is about first thinking whether you really need phylogenetic diversity (it is always about thinking first, isn't it?), but in the light of what may represent, and whether it is of use or not about the question at hand. We had a pick a while ago at https://doi.org/10.1007/s12224-015-9228-6

fboetzl.bsky.social•104 days ago

What about an investment in the future? If we end a line by extinction, we eliminate the potential of it evolving into something that might bring additional / new function in the distant future.

bmwildermuth.bsky.social•104 days ago

This may be the obvious "unmeasured traits" answer, ignore it if it's not answering your question, but:

as no organism evolves in a vacuum, there are many other organisms uniquely associated with any phylogenetic clade.

Especially in case of enormous organisms such as trees 🌲

andresbaselga.bsky.social•105 days ago

Diversity is the product of evolution. Loosing big chunks of the tree of life seems bad, and worse than loosing small bits. Not sure if it is an aesthetic, ethic or metaphysical position. For me biological diversity has intrinsic value independent of function

isimova.bsky.social•104 days ago

I would ask a different question (and I don't have the answer): Given the traits for which we have the most data, what does functional diversity represent?

smartenwinter.bsky.social•104 days ago

Maybe I don't get it and I know Irena that you know so much, but aren't you convinced by the resource or niche spectra based on trait dimensions?

@bjenquist.bsky.social @maitner.bsky.social Jump in here if needed :)

maitner.bsky.social•104 days ago

I definitely think trait based approaches do a better job in most cases. Heck, body size alone will get you pretty far! I think the big limitation in a lot of trait work is related to lack of in situ data and intraspecific variation. Also compromises on what we can measure given time/finances.

isimova.bsky.social•104 days ago

I generally agree, but I am not fully convinced that the traits common in databases are sufficient for capturing these spectra. And there are other problems, see e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169534724002532 concerning the traits in predicting coexistence. And agree with @maitner.bsky.social's point

maitner.bsky.social•104 days ago

Totally agree, @isimova.bsky.social . Re: coexistence, I would love to be able to measure nutrient uptake rates in plants, as I'd expect this would be an important trait. Seems like a good thing for iDiv to do ;)

isimova.bsky.social•104 days ago

This would be a good one! Plus use bellow-ground traits too (~ @exfumo.bsky.social )

maitner.bsky.social•104 days ago

Totally! Below ground traits are very underappreciated!

smartenwinter.bsky.social•104 days ago

Belowground traits: https://www.idiv.de/research/sdiv/working-groups/sunderfoot/

Nitrogen uptake...i think ppl work on it

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