COS 50-1 - CANCELLED - Phylogenetic alfa and beta diversity of Tropical Dry Forest plant communities in an aridity gradient

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

8:00 AM – 8:15 AM PDT

Location: B114

Coauthor(s)

EJ

Emanoel Fernando Jurema Araújo, n/a

Master student
University of Pernambuco - campus Petrolina
Petrolina, Pernambuco, Brazil
AP

Ana Claudia Pereira Oliveira

Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes – Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal, Lisboa, Portugal
RG

Renato Garcia Rodrigues, n/a

Professor/Researcher
Núcleo de Ecologia e Monitoramento Ambiental, Universidade Federal do Vale do São Francisco, Petrolina, Brazil, Brazil
CB

Cristina Branquinho

cE3c-Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes & CHANGE-Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, 1749-016 Lisbon, Portugal
AN

Alice Nunes, n/a

Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes – Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal, Lisboa, Portugal

Presenting Author(s)

ER

Elâine Maria Dos Santos Ribeiro, Elâine Ribeiro

Professor/Researcher
University of Pernambuco - campus Petrolina
Petrolina, Brazil

Abstract: Understanding the variation of ecological indicators based on community diversity measures are very interesting and valuable to predict consequences of climate change on biological communities. Evaluating these indicators in climatic gradients (e.g. aridity) is a very applied approach that allows infer possible future effects of climate change over time, especially, when we don’t have sufficiently long time-series data. Measures of phylogenetic diversity can be used as indicators of communities by showing patterns of evolutionary history and species relatedness in a community. Here, we evaluated the response of plant communities phylogenetic diversity in 113 sampling sites along a spatial aridity gradient (from 0.27 to 0.69 of aridity index-AI) of 700 km in a Tropical Dry Forest located in Northeastern Brazil. We used linear models to test if the community mean effective number of lineages, mean phylogenetic distance and phylogenetic dispersion decreased with aridity. Furthermore, we test if the beta phylogenetic diversity increases due the reduction of aridity distances. As preliminary results, we found that the mean effective number of lineages and the mean phylogenetic distance of plant communities were negatively related to aridity. We also verified that plant communities in more arid places were phylogenetic clustered. Sites with a small aridity index distance presented a larger phylogenetic similarity. Our results indicate that aridity can be considered as an important driver of plant phylogenetic assembly in Tropical Dry Forests. In our studied area, the Brazilian Caatinga, global change scenarios predicting a future with water availability reduction can impose an expressive increase in aridity, which can consequently shape phylogenetic diversity of plant communities. The potential loss of evolutionary history in plant communities might favour specific phylogenetic clades more adapted to aridity, and consequently can limit the capacity of the ecosystem in providing important environmental services to forest dependent people.