A Phylogenetic Model of Established and Enabled Biome Shifts.

Where each species actually lives is distinct from where it could potentially survive and persist. This suggests that it may be important to distinguish established from enabled biome affinities when considering how ancestral species moved and evolved among major habitat types. We introduce a new phylogenetic method, called RFBS, to model how anagenetic and cladogenetic events cause established and enabled biome affinities (or, more generally, other discrete realized versus fundamental niche states) to shift over evolutionary timescale.

Caught in the Act: Incipient Speciation at the Southern Limit of Viburnum in the Central Andes.

A fundamental objective of evolutionary biology is to understand the origin of independently evolving species. Phylogenetic studies of species radiations rarely are able to document ongoing speciation; instead, modes of speciation, entailing geographic separation and/or ecological differentiation, are posited retrospectively. The Oreinotinus clade of Viburnum has radiated recently from north to south through the cloud forests of Mexico and Central America to the Central Andes.

A phylogenomic analysis of Lonicera and its bearing on the evolution of organ fusion.

Premise: The ~140 species of Lonicera are characterized by variously fused leaves, bracteoles, and ovaries, making it a model system for studying the evolution and development of organ fusion. However, previous phylogenetic analyses, based mainly on chloroplast DNA markers, have yielded uncertain and conflicting results. A well-supported phylogeny of Lonicera will allow us to trace the evolutionary history of organ fusion.

Multiple origins of lipid-based structural colors contribute to a gradient of fruit colors in Viburnum (Adoxaceae).

Structural color is poorly known in plants relative to animals. In fruits, only a handful of cases have been described, including in Viburnum tinus where the blue color results from a disordered multilayered reflector made of lipid droplets. Here, we examine the broader evolutionary context of fruit structural color across the genus Viburnum.

Replicated radiation of a plant clade along a cloud forest archipelago.

Replicated radiations, in which sets of similar forms evolve repeatedly within different regions, can provide powerful insights into parallel evolution and the assembly of functional diversity within communities. Several cases have been described in animals, but in plants we lack well-documented cases of replicated radiation that combine comprehensive phylogenetic and biogeographic analyses, the delimitation of geographic areas within which a set of 'ecomorphs' evolved independently and the identification of potential underlying mechanisms. Here we document the repeated evolution of a set of leaf ecomorphs in a group of neotropical plants.

Phylogenetic inference of where species spread or split across barriers.

SignificanceGeography molds how species evolve in space. Strong geographical barriers to movement, for instance, both inhibit dispersal between regions and allow isolated populations to diverge as new species. Weak barriers, by contrast, permit species range expansion and persistence.

Reconstructing Dipsacales phylogeny using Angiosperms353: issues and insights.

Premise: Phylogenetic relationships within major angiosperm clades are increasingly well resolved, but largely informed by plastid data. Areas of poor resolution persist within the Dipsacales, including placement of Heptacodium and Zabelia, and relationships within the Caprifolieae and Linnaeeae, hindering our interpretation of morphological evolution. Here, we sampled a significant number of nuclear loci using a Hyb-Seq approach and used these data to infer the Dipsacales phylogeny and estimate divergence times.

Dispersers and environment drive global variation in fruit colour syndromes.

The colours of fleshy fruits play a critical role in plant dispersal by advertising ripe fruits to consumers. Fruit colours have long been classified into syndromes attributed to selection by animal dispersers, despite weak evidence for this hypothesis. Here, we test the relative importance of biotic (bird and mammal frugivory) and abiotic (wet season temperatures, growing season length and UV-B radiation) factors in determining fruit colour syndrome in 3163 species of fleshy-fruited plants.

Resolved phylogenetic relationships in the Ocotea complex (Supraocotea) facilitate phylogenetic classification and studies of character evolution.

Premise: The Ocotea complex contains the greatest diversity of Lauraceae in the Neotropics. However, the traditional taxonomy of the group has relied on only three main floral characters, and previous molecular analyses have used only a few markers and provided limited support for relationships among the major clades. This lack of useful data has hindered the development of a comprehensive classification, as well as studies of character evolution.

Evolutionary dynamics of genome size in a radiation of woody plants.

Premise: Plant genome size ranges widely, providing many opportunities to examine how genome size variation affects plant form and function. We analyzed trends in chromosome number, genome size, and leaf traits for the woody angiosperm clade Viburnum to examine the evolutionary associations, functional implications, and possible drivers of genome size.

Methods: Chromosome counts and genome size estimates were mapped onto a Viburnum phylogeny to infer the location and frequency of polyploidization events and trends in genome size evolution.

Viburnum tinus Fruits Use Lipids to Produce Metallic Blue Structural Color.

Viburnum tinus is an evergreen shrub that is native to the Mediterranean region but cultivated widely in Europe and around the world. It produces ripe metallic blue fruits throughout winter [1]. Despite its limited fleshy pulp [2], its high lipid content [3] makes it a valuable resource to the small birds [4] that act as its seed-dispersers [5].

Diversification in evolutionary arenas-Assessment and synthesis.

Understanding how and why rates of evolutionary diversification vary is a key issue in evolutionary biology, ecology, and biogeography. Evolutionary rates are the net result of interacting processes summarized under concepts such as adaptive radiation and evolutionary stasis. Here, we review the central concepts in the evolutionary diversification literature and synthesize these into a simple, general framework for studying rates of diversification and quantifying their underlying dynamics, which can be applied across clades and regions, and across spatial and temporal scales.

Modeling Phylogenetic Biome Shifts on a Planet with a Past.

The spatial distribution of biomes has changed considerably over deep time, so the geographical opportunity for an evolutionary lineage to shift into a new biome may depend on how the availability and connectivity of biomes has varied temporally. To better understand how lineages shift between biomes in space and time, we developed a phylogenetic biome shift model in which each lineage shifts between biomes and disperses between regions at rates that depend on the lineage's biome affinity and location relative to the spatial distribution of biomes at any given time. To study the behavior of the biome shift model in an empirical setting, we developed a literature-based representation of paleobiome structure for three mesic forest biomes, six regions, and eight time strata, ranging from the Late Cretaceous (100 Ma) through the present.

Joint Phylogenetic Estimation of Geographic Movements and Biome Shifts during the Global Diversification of Viburnum.

Phylogeny, molecular sequences, fossils, biogeography, and biome occupancy are all lines of evidence that reflect the singular evolutionary history of a clade, but they are most often studied separately, by first inferring a fossil-dated molecular phylogeny, then mapping on ancestral ranges and biomes inferred from extant species. Here we jointly model the evolution of biogeographic ranges, biome affinities, and molecular sequences, while incorporating fossils to estimate a dated phylogeny for all of the 163 extant species of the woody plant clade Viburnum (Adoxaceae) that we currently recognize in our ongoing worldwide monographic treatment of the group. Our analyses indicate that while the major Viburnum lineages evolved in the Eocene, the majority of extant species originated since the Miocene.

Fruit syndromes in Viburnum: correlated evolution of color, nutritional content, and morphology in bird-dispersed fleshy fruits.

Premise: A key question in plant dispersal via animal vectors is where and why fruit colors vary between species and how color relates to other fruit traits. To better understand the factors shaping the evolution of fruit color diversity, we tested for the existence of syndromes of traits (color, morphology, and nutrition) in the fruits of Viburnum. We placed these results in a larger phylogenetic context and reconstructed ancestral states to assess how Viburnum fruit traits have evolved across the clade.

Accumulation over evolutionary time as a major cause of biodiversity hotspots in conifers.

Biodiversity hotspots are important for understanding how areas of high species richness form, but disentangling the processes that produce them is difficult. We combine geographical ranges, phylogenetic relationships and trait data for 606 conifer species in order to explore the mechanisms underlying richness hotspot formation. We identify eight richness hotspots that overlap known centres of plant endemism and diversity, and find that conifer richness hotspots occur in mountainous areas within broader regions of long-term climate stability.

Phylogeography of a widespread eastern North American shrub, Viburnum lantanoides.

Premise Of The Study: There have been relatively few phylogeographic studies of eastern North American plants, especially of animal-dispersed shrubby species, and this leaves a significant gap in our understanding of how such species were affected by glacial events. Here, we analyzed the phylogeography of the widespread understory shrub Viburnum lantanoides.

Methods: We generated RADseq data and paleoclimatic species distribution models (SDMs) to identify the locations of refugia where V.

Restriction-Site-Associated DNA Sequencing Reveals a Cryptic Viburnum Species on the North American Coastal Plain.

Species are the starting point for most studies of ecology and evolution, but the proper circumscription of species can be extremely difficult in morphologically variable lineages, and there are still few convincing examples of molecularly informed species delimitation in plants. Here, we focus on the Viburnum nudum complex, a highly variable clade that is widely distributed in eastern North America. Taxonomic treatments have mostly divided this complex into northern (V.

Sterile marginal flowers increase visitation and fruit set in the hobblebush (Viburnum lantanoides, Adoxaceae) at multiple spatial scales.

Background And Aims: Enlarged sterile flowers on the periphery of inflorescences increase the attractiveness of floral displays, and previous studies have generally demonstrated that these have positive effects on insect visitation and/or reproductive success. However, experiments have not specifically been designed to examine the benefits of sterile flowers under conditions that reflect the early stages in their evolution, i.e.

Plant height and hydraulic vulnerability to drought and cold.

Understanding how plants survive drought and cold is increasingly important as plants worldwide experience dieback with drought in moist places and grow taller with warming in cold ones. Crucial in plant climate adaptation are the diameters of water-transporting conduits. Sampling 537 species across climate zones dominated by angiosperms, we find that plant size is unambiguously the main driver of conduit diameter variation.

Topological Data Analysis as a Morphometric Method: Using Persistent Homology to Demarcate a Leaf Morphospace.

Current morphometric methods that comprehensively measure shape cannot compare the disparate leaf shapes found in seed plants and are sensitive to processing artifacts. We explore the use of persistent homology, a topological method applied as a filtration across simplicial complexes (or more simply, a method to measure topological features of spaces across different spatial resolutions), to overcome these limitations. The described method isolates subsets of shape features and measures the spatial relationship of neighboring pixel densities in a shape.