The influence of trophic and phylogenetic affinity on the co-occurrence of butterflyfishes
Channel: Encontro Recifal Brasileiro
Date: 2020-07-01

Lucas Nunes Teixeira; Alexandre C. Siqueira; Isadora Cord; Benjamin M. Ford; Ana M. R. Liedke; Carlos E. L. Ferreira; Sergio R. Floeter

Understanding “why species are where they are” at different scales is one of the main focus of ecological and biogeographical studies. Most of these studies investigate the co-occurrence of species at the scale of regions or provinces, while few of them focus on the smaller spatial scales at habitat level. Although ecological processes are thought to be more important for driving co-occurrence patterns at the habitat scale, it is not yet known if phylogenetic constraints can also exert some influence. We studied the co-occurrence of butterflyfishes worldwide about trophic characteristics and evolutionary histories, specifically examining two questions. First, does phylogenetic affinity explain co-occurrence at the habitat scale? To answer this, we used abundance data, obtained through visual census, from 23 localities around the world and performed partial mantel tests to evaluate whether phylogenetic affinity alone as well as controlled by diet among sympatric species pairs explains co-occurrences at the habitat scale. Second, we focused on the less studied Chaetodontidae species of the Atlantic Ocean and Eastern Pacific to understand whether the diets of sister species are phylogenetically conserved. We found that phylogenetic distance per se fails to explain the co-occurrence between butterflyfish species pairs (N = 2,618 co-occurrences analyzed), although closely related species pairs never co-occur in high frequency. This suggests that evolutionary processes are not the main drivers of species co-occurrence and highlights niche-related processes (e.g. habitat partitioning and territorial behaviour) as well as species’ life history (e.g. dispersal ability) as the most important factors in determining whether species co-occur in the habitat scale. Finally, we found no correlation between phylogenetic distance and diet similarities for Atlantic and East Pacific butterflyfishes, thus, in these regions, species’ diets do not seem to be phylogenetically conserved.