Niche overlap points to ecological divergence between Abies pinsapo populations from both sides of the Mediterranean Sea
Creators: name: González-Hernández, Antonio
name: Nieto-Lugilde, Diego
name: Peñas, Julio
name: Fitzpatrick, Matthew
name: Alba-Sánchez, Francisca
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2024

description: The Strait of Gibraltar has acted as a selective bridge in the exchange of species between Europe and Africa, giving rise to patterns of isolation between populations that facilitate allopatric speciation. Abies pinsapo complex is an endemic taxon of the western Mediterranean that presents two lineages distributed between both sides of the Strait: Abies pinsapo Boiss. in the Betic mountain range (Iberian Peninsula, Europe) and Abies marocana Trab. in the Rif (Northern Morocco, Africa). The niches of European and African populations of the A. pinsapo complex are compared to reveal the consequences of their geographic segregation from a common ancestor since the Middle Miocene (~15 Ma); that is, evidence the existence of niche conservation or divergence between lineages. The results point to a divergence of niches between lineages, manifested through habitat differences, on both sides of the Mediterranean.
description: We analysed intercontinental differences between the niches of Betics and Rif of Abies pinsapo complex populations. We contrasted these results with the intracontinental analyses in which two Betic subpopulations (Grazalema and Sierra de las Nieves) were compared.

Occurrences

The presence of the A. pinsapo complex was verified in sampling campaigns during the years 2012 to 2014. Duplicate records were eliminated in the working resolution. A total of 108 presences were obtained in two main intercontinental populations: Betics (n = 90) and Rif (n = 18). For the intracontinental analyses the Betics group was divided into two European subsets: Grazalema (n = 28) and Sierra de las Nieves (n = 62). The subsets with few records were integrated into larger ones.



Betics (n = 90)



Grazalema (n = 28)

Sierra de las Nieves (Sierra de las Nieves s.e., n = 58; Sierra Bermeja n = 4)



Rif (n = 18)



Talassemtane (n = 14)

Tassaot (n = 4)




Climatic variables

Niches were defined by five environmental variables derived from WorldClim 1.4 and FAO Soil Portal.



GDD: Growing Degree-days (°C·day)

APA: Annual Precipitation (mm)

WQP: Warmest Quarter Precipitation (mm)

SLP: Slope (%)

NOR: North-facingness [-100 (S) to 100 (N)]
description: The file NicheDivergence.csv contains the species occurrence records with the following fields:



CD: Code that designates the stand with verified presence of Abies pinsapo complex.

SET: Subset to which the record belongs (GRA, Grazalema; SBE, Sierra Bermeja; SNI, Sierra de las Nieves s.e.; TAL, Talassemtane; TST, Tassaot).

LAT: Latitude expressed in decimal degrees (Datum WGS84).

LON: Longitude expressed in decimal degrees (Datum WGS84).

GDD: Value of the Growing Degree-days in the record point  (°C·day)

AP: Value of the Annual Precipitation in the record point (mm)

WQP: Value of the Warmest Quarter Precipitation in the record point (mm)

SLP: Value of the Slope in the record point (%)

NOR: Value of the North-facingness in the record point [-100 (S) to 100 (N)]

PH: Value of the pH in the record point (finally rejected as predictor in the analyses).


Files GDD_alboran, AP_alboran and WQP_alboran, SLP_alboran and NOR_alboran are raster files for the climatic and topographic predictor variables.

Poster_Sfe.pdf contains the poster communication.