Cooney Flashcards
The open tree of life aims to build a tree of all … … described species on Earth
2.3 million
Diversity is … on the tree of life
imbalanced
In terms of kingdoms, how are species unevenly distributed?
Far more animal species (over 1.5 million) than any other group (e.g. around 400,000 plants - 2nd most)
Within the animal kingdom, the phylum … vastly dominates in terms of number of species
arthropoda
… is ubiquitous across the tree of life
unevenness - wherever you look - within phyla, orders, families etc.
Species richness … a great deal across the tree of life
varies
An example of phylogenetic imbalance is between the … and the … and …
caddisflies, moths, butterflies
Phylogenetic imbalance is the relative numbers of … … (usually species) on the branches that originate at the … …
descendant tips, focal node
Does chance alone explain the variation in species richness across the tree of life?
- imbalance can (and is predicted to) arise by chance
- however, more imbalanced trees than expected by chance (and fewer balanced) - according to Guyer and Slowinski (1991) - who looked at 120 phylogenies (5 species in each) for imbalance
what is the equal-rates Markov model?
- Species arise from other species (bifurcate)
- probability of speciation per unit time is constant across all lineages
- can be extended to include extinction (probability also constant across lineages)
- expect ratio of 2:1 imbalance vs balanced trees
Does variation in clade age explain differences in species richness across the tree of life? young clades have had less time to accumulate species and diversify after all
Clade age and species richness are uncorrelated across 1397 clades of multicellular eukaryotes (Rabosky et al, 2012) - even when looking at individual taxa still very little to no evidence - clade age is a poor explanation for phylogenetic imbalance
Does variation in net diversification rate explain the phylogenetic tree imbalance?
When we look at the net diversification rates across different clades and taxa we see huge variation
- this does explain patterns of variation in species richness
- There is a strong positive correlation between diversification rate and species richness in groups of the phylogenetic tree (across different taxonomic levels)
Net diversification rate (R) is the net rate of lineage splitting and is the … rate - the … rate. It is expressed as the average number of … events per lineage per … …
speciation, extinction, splitting, million years
R = b - d
How can we visualise differences in diversification rate is using … … … (LTT) plots. If speciation rate is constant and extinction is zero, then clade growth is …, which produces a … … when logged.
lineage through time, exponential
… … have diverged at a roughly constant rate
Hawaiian silverswords (25 species in 5 million years) - very high speciation rate
+ hummingbirds (338 species)