Niche lability in the evolution of a Caribbean lizard community

Jonathan B. Losos (), Manuel Leal, Richard E. Glor, Kevin de Queiroz, Paul E. Hertz, Lourdes Rodríguez Schettino, Ada Chamizo Lara, Todd R. Jackman and Allan Larson
Additional contact information
Jonathan B. Losos: Washington University
Manuel Leal: Union College
Richard E. Glor: Washington University
Kevin de Queiroz: National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution
Paul E. Hertz: Barnard College
Lourdes Rodríguez Schettino: Instituto de Ecología y Sistemática, CITGMA
Ada Chamizo Lara: Instituto de Ecología y Sistemática, CITGMA
Todd R. Jackman: Villanova University
Allan Larson: Washington University

Nature, 2003, vol. 424, issue 6948, 542-545

Abstract: Abstract Niche conservatism—the tendency for closely related species to be ecologically similar—is widespread1,2,3. However, most studies compare closely related taxa that occur in allopatry3; in sympatry, the stabilizing forces that promote niche conservatism4,5, and thus inhibit niche shifts, may be countered by natural selection favouring ecological divergence to minimize the intensity of interspecific interactions6,7. Consequently, the relative importance of niche conservatism versus niche divergence in determining community structure has received little attention7. Here, we examine a tropical lizard community in which species have a long evolutionary history of ecological interaction. We find that evolutionary divergence overcomes niche conservatism: closely related species are no more ecologically similar than expected by random divergence and some distantly related species are ecologically similar, leading to a community in which the relationship between ecological similarity and phylogenetic relatedness is very weak. Despite this lack of niche conservatism, the ecological structuring of the community has a phylogenetic component: niche complementarity only occurs among distantly related species, which suggests that the strength of ecological interactions among species may be related to phylogeny, but it is not necessarily the most closely related species that interact most strongly.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature01814 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:424:y:2003:i:6948:d:10.1038_nature01814

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature01814

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().