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Comparison of climate space and phylogeny of Marmota (Mammalia: Rodentia) indicates a connection between evolutionary history and climate preference.

Davis EB

Department of Integrative Biology, Museum of Paleontology, University of California, Berkeley, 3060 Valley Life Sciences Building, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. daviseb@socrates.berkeley.edu

Palaeobiologists have investigated the evolutionary responses to extinct organisms to climate change, and have also used extinct organisms to reconstruct palaeoclimates. There is evidence of a disconnection between climate change and evolution that suggest that organism may not be accurate paleoclimate indicators. Here, marmots (Marmota sp.) are used as a case study to examine whether similarity of climate preferences is correlated with evolutionary relatedness of species. This study tests for a relationship between phylogenetic distance and 'climate distance' of species with a clade. There should be a significant congruence between maximus likelihood distance and standardized Euclidian distance between climates if daughter species tend to say in environments similar to parent species. Marmots make a good test case because there are many extant species, their phylogenetics are well established and individual survival is linked to climatic factors. A Mantel test indicates a significant correlation between climate and phylogenetic distance matrices, but this relationship explains only a small fraction of the variance (regression R(2) = 0.114). These results that (i) closely related species of marmots tend to stay in similar environments; (ii) marmots may be more susceptible than may mammals to global climate change; and (iii) because of the considerable noise in this system, the correlation cannot be used for detailed palaeoclimate reconstruction.

Published 31 March 2005 in Proc Biol Sci, 272(1562): 519-26.
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