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Mutualistic Interactions Drive Ecological Niche Convergence in a Diverse Butterfly Community

Ecological communities are structured in part by evolutionary interactions among their members. A number of recent studies incorporating phylogenetics into community ecology have upheld the paradigm that competition drives ecological divergence among species of the same guild. However, the role of o...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Elias, Marianne, Gompert, Zachariah, Jiggins, Chris, Willmott, Keith
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2008
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2592358/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19055316
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060300
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author Elias, Marianne
Gompert, Zachariah
Jiggins, Chris
Willmott, Keith
author_facet Elias, Marianne
Gompert, Zachariah
Jiggins, Chris
Willmott, Keith
author_sort Elias, Marianne
collection PubMed
description Ecological communities are structured in part by evolutionary interactions among their members. A number of recent studies incorporating phylogenetics into community ecology have upheld the paradigm that competition drives ecological divergence among species of the same guild. However, the role of other interspecific interactions, in particular positive interactions such as mutualism, remains poorly explored. We characterized the ecological niche and inferred phylogenetic relationships among members of a diverse community of neotropical Müllerian mimetic butterflies. Müllerian mimicry is one of the best studied examples of mutualism, in which unpalatable species converge in wing pattern locally to advertize their toxicity to predators. We provide evidence that mutualistic interactions can drive convergence along multiple ecological axes, outweighing both phylogeny and competition in shaping community structure. Our findings imply that ecological communities are adaptively assembled to a much greater degree than commonly suspected. In addition, our results show that phenotype and ecology are strongly linked and support the idea that mimicry can cause ecological speciation through multiple cascading effects on species' biology.
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spelling pubmed-25923582008-12-02 Mutualistic Interactions Drive Ecological Niche Convergence in a Diverse Butterfly Community Elias, Marianne Gompert, Zachariah Jiggins, Chris Willmott, Keith PLoS Biol Research Article Ecological communities are structured in part by evolutionary interactions among their members. A number of recent studies incorporating phylogenetics into community ecology have upheld the paradigm that competition drives ecological divergence among species of the same guild. However, the role of other interspecific interactions, in particular positive interactions such as mutualism, remains poorly explored. We characterized the ecological niche and inferred phylogenetic relationships among members of a diverse community of neotropical Müllerian mimetic butterflies. Müllerian mimicry is one of the best studied examples of mutualism, in which unpalatable species converge in wing pattern locally to advertize their toxicity to predators. We provide evidence that mutualistic interactions can drive convergence along multiple ecological axes, outweighing both phylogeny and competition in shaping community structure. Our findings imply that ecological communities are adaptively assembled to a much greater degree than commonly suspected. In addition, our results show that phenotype and ecology are strongly linked and support the idea that mimicry can cause ecological speciation through multiple cascading effects on species' biology. Public Library of Science 2008-12 2008-12-02 /pmc/articles/PMC2592358/ /pubmed/19055316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060300 Text en © 2008 Elias et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Elias, Marianne
Gompert, Zachariah
Jiggins, Chris
Willmott, Keith
Mutualistic Interactions Drive Ecological Niche Convergence in a Diverse Butterfly Community
title Mutualistic Interactions Drive Ecological Niche Convergence in a Diverse Butterfly Community
title_full Mutualistic Interactions Drive Ecological Niche Convergence in a Diverse Butterfly Community
title_fullStr Mutualistic Interactions Drive Ecological Niche Convergence in a Diverse Butterfly Community
title_full_unstemmed Mutualistic Interactions Drive Ecological Niche Convergence in a Diverse Butterfly Community
title_short Mutualistic Interactions Drive Ecological Niche Convergence in a Diverse Butterfly Community
title_sort mutualistic interactions drive ecological niche convergence in a diverse butterfly community
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2592358/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19055316
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.0060300
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