Environmental and geographic drivers of global bat phylogenetic diversity
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This article is not in any list yet, why not save it to one of your lists.Abstract
Aim
Understanding patterns of biodiversity is vital to conserving species. We aimed to combine open-source genetic, environmental, and geographic information to analyze patterns of bat phylogenetic diversity (PD) in continuous ecoregions across the globe. This information is important for developing bat conservation strategies, and our methodology can work with any taxa that has sufficient georeferenced genetic data available.
Location
Global.
Time period
Last Interglacial to Present Day.
Major taxa studied
Chiroptera.
Methods
After curating a global dataset containing 14,037 COI DNA sequences from 343 described species of bats, we calculated PD for two sets of continuous ecoregions at different spatial scales. To avoid the possible difficulties of using current species names, we used genetic OTUs identified by a single-locus species delimitation method to calculate PD. We then estimated a lineage through time plot and used random forest predictive modeling to identify the environmental and geographic predictors of PD.
Results
We found that temperature variables were most closely associated with PD. In addition to temperature during the present, temperature during the last glacial maxima and temperature changes since the last interglacial were deemed important. However, when looking at different spatial scales, top variables differed slightly. Southeast Asia and South America had the highest levels of PD, along with some parts of Africa and the Himalayas. We demonstrate that, regardless of spatial scale and uneven sampling across the globe, single-locus genetic data is enough to reflect species diversity gradients.
Main conclusions
We show that publicly available, single-locus data can be used to analyze large-scale evolutionary patterns and inform effective and efficient conservation efforts. Additionally, choice of biodiversity measure and spatial scale matter when assessing species patterns. When looking at bats, temperature variables with a historical component are most important for predicting PD.
