Climatic niche evolution in turtles is characterized by phylogenetic conservatism for both aquatic and terrestrial species

Abstract

Understanding how the climatic niche of species evolved has been a topic of high interest in current theoretical and applied macroecological studies. However, little is known regarding how species traits might influence climatic niche evolution. Here, we evaluated patterns of climatic niche evolution in turtles (tortoises and freshwater turtles) and whether species habitat (terrestrial or aquatic) influences these patterns. We used phylogenetic, climatic and distribution data for 261 species to estimate their climatic niches. Then, we compared whether niche overlap between sister species was higher than between random species pairs and evaluated whether niche optima and rates varied between aquatic and terrestrial species. Sister species had higher values of niche overlap than random species pairs, suggesting phylogenetic climatic niche conservatism in turtles. The climatic niche evolution of the group followed an Ornstein-Uhlenbeck model with different optimum values for aquatic and terrestrial species, but we did not find consistent evidence of differences in their rates of climatic niche evolution. We conclude that phylogenetic climatic niche conservatism occurs among turtle species. Furthermore, terrestrial and aquatic species occupy different climatic niches but these seem to have evolved at similar evolutionary rates, reinforcing the importance of habitat in understanding species climatic niches and their evolution.

Keywords: Testudines; climatic optimum; evolutionary models; habitat; niche evolution; niche overlap; phylogenetic niche conservatism.