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Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB)
Recent news
RMC Publication Spotlight: Brad Ruhfel on the first plastid phylogenomic analysis of the family Podostemaceae
The results provide a strong basis for improving the classification of Podostemaceae and a framework for future phylogenomic studies of the clade employing data from the nuclear genome.
Faculty Publication Spotlight: Dr. L. Lacey Knowles in Nature Reviews Biodiversity
In this Review, the co-authors explore the coupled evolution of Amazonian rivers and biodiversity associated with terrestrial and seasonally flooded environments, integrating geological, climatic, ecological and genetic evidence.
RESEARCH FEATURE
EEB's grad student Matheus Januário, and professor Daniel Rabosky's paper "The Metapopulation Bridge to Macroevolutionary Speciation Rates: A Conceptual Framework and Empirical Test," in Ecology Letters.
Abstract: Whether large-scale variation in lineage diversification rates can be predicted by species properties at the population level is a key unresolved question at the interface between micro- and macroevolution. All else being equal, species with biological attributes that confer metapopulation stability should persist more often at timescales relevant to speciation and so give rise to new (incipient) forms that share these biological traits. Here, we develop a framework for testing the relationship between metapopulation properties related to persistence and phylogenetic speciation rates. We apply this conceptual approach to a long-term dataset on demersal fish communities from the North American continental shelf region. We find that one index of metapopulation persistence has phylogenetic signal, suggesting that traits are connected with range-wide demographic patterns. However, there is no relationship between demographic properties and speciation rate. These findings suggest a decoupling between ecological dynamics at decadal timescales and million-year clade dynamics, raising questions about the extent to which population-level processes observable over ecological timescales can be extrapolated to infer biodiversity dynamics more generally.