The Cladistic Basis for the Phylogenetic Diversity (PD) Measure Links Evolutionary Features to Environmental Gradients and Supports Broad Applications of Microbial Ecology’s “Phylogenetic Beta Diversity” Framework

International Journal of Molecular Sciences

Daniel P. Faith³  Catherine A. Lozupone²  David Nipperess¹ 

[1] Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, NSW, 2109, Australia; E-Mail:;Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309, USA; E-Mails:;The Australian Museum, 6 College St., Sydney, NSW, 2010, Australia

关键词: bacteria;    UniFrac;    feature diversity;    ordination;    PD calculus;    evolutionary features;    GEO BON;    climate change;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ijms10114723

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

The PD measure of phylogenetic diversity interprets branch lengths cladistically to make inferences about feature diversity. PD calculations extend conventional species-level ecological indices to the features level. The “phylogenetic beta diversity” framework developed by microbial ecologists calculates PD-dissimilarities between community localities. Interpretation of these PD-dissimilarities at the feature level explains the framework’s success in producing ordinations revealing environmental gradients. An example gradients space using PD-dissimilarities illustrates how evolutionary features form unimodal response patterns to gradients. This features model supports new application of existing species-level methods that are robust to unimodal responses, plus novel applications relating to climate change, commercial products discovery, and community assembly.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2009 by the authors; licensee Molecular Diversity Preservation International, Basel, Switzerland.