Publications by authors named "Diego Nieto Lugilde"

Premise: Sphagnum magellanicum (Sphagnaceae, Bryophyta) has been considered to be a single semi-cosmopolitan species, but recent molecular analyses have shown that it comprises a complex of at least seven reciprocally monophyletic groups, that are difficult or impossible to distinguish morphologically.

Methods: Newly developed barcode markers and RADseq analyses were used to identify species among 808 samples from 119 sites. Molecular approaches were used to assess the geographic ranges of four North American species, the frequency at which they occur sympatrically, and ecological differentiation among them.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Preserving the genetic diversity of forest species is critical for maintaining their adaptive potential and allowing for generation turnover in forest ecosystems. Considering an uncertain future, it is necessary to establish reliable genetic conservation strategies to optimize the genetic variation preserved within populations in a spatially explicit context to assist decision-makers. Hence, we aimed to incorporate genetic information into spatially designed conservation actions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Disentangling the influence of environmental drivers on community assembly is important to understand how multiple processes influence biodiversity patterns and can inform understanding of ecological responses to climate change. Phylogenetic Community Structure (PCS) is increasingly used in community assembly studies to incorporate evolutionary perspectives and as a proxy for trait (dis)similarity within communities. Studies often assume a stationary relationship between PCS and climate, though few studies have tested this assumption over long time periods with concurrent community data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Future climates are projected to be highly novel relative to recent climates. Climate novelty challenges models that correlate ecological patterns to climate variables and then use these relationships to forecast ecological responses to future climate change. Here, we quantify the magnitude and ecological significance of future climate novelty by comparing it to novel climates over the past 21,000 years in North America.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Asexual taxa often have larger ranges than their sexual progenitors, particularly in areas affected by Pleistocene glaciations. The reasons given for this 'geographical parthenogenesis' are contentious, with expansion of the ecological niche or colonisation advantages of uniparental reproduction assumed most important in case of plants. Here, we parameterized a spread model for the alpine buttercup Ranunculus kuepferi and reconstructed the joint Holocene range expansion of its sexual and apomictic cytotype across the European Alps under different simulation settings.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aim: Emerging polyploids may depend on environmental niche shifts for successful establishment. Using the alpine plant as a model system, we explore the niche shift hypothesis at different spatial resolutions and in contrasting parts of the species range.

Location: European Alps.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Increasingly, ecological modellers are integrating paleodata with future projections to understand climate-driven biodiversity dynamics from the past through the current century. Climate simulations from earth system models are necessary to this effort, but must be debiased and downscaled before they can be used by ecological models. Downscaling methods and observational baselines vary among researchers, which produces confounding biases among downscaled climate simulations.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Species distribution models (SDMs) assume species exist in isolation and do not influence one another's distributions, thus potentially limiting their ability to predict biodiversity patterns. Community-level models (CLMs) capitalize on species co-occurrences to fit shared environmental responses of species and communities, and therefore may result in more robust and transferable models. Here, we conduct a controlled comparison of five paired SDMs and CLMs across changing climates, using palaeoclimatic simulations and fossil-pollen records of eastern North America for the past 21 000 years.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The role of competition for light among plants has long been recognised at local scales, but its importance for plant species distributions at larger spatial scales has generally been ignored. Tree cover modifies the local abiotic conditions below the canopy, notably by reducing light availability, and thus, also the performance of species that are not adapted to low-light conditions. However, this local effect may propagate to coarser spatial grains, by affecting colonisation probabilities and local extinction risks of herbs and shrubs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF