Ecologists and evolutionary biologists have long been interested in the role of interspecific competition in the diversification of clades. These studies often focus on a single taxonomic group, making the implicit assumption that important competitive interactions occur only between closely related taxa, despite abundant documentation of intense competition between species that are distantly related. Specifically, this assumption ignores convergence of distantly related competitors on limiting niche axes and thus may miss cryptic effects of distantly related competitors on the evolution of focal clades. For example, distantly related competitors may act as important drivers of niche conservatism within clades, a pattern commonly ascribed to evolutionary constraints or the abiotic environment. Here we propose an alternative model of how niche similarity evolves when the functional traits of interest are mediated by unrelated phenotypic traits, as is often the case for distantly related competitors. This model represents an important conceptual step towards a more accurate, taxonomically inclusive understanding of the role that competition plays in the micro- and macroevolution of interacting species.

生态学家和进化生物学家长期以来对种间竞争在进化枝多样化中的作用感兴趣。这些研究通常集中于单个分类学组，隐含假设重要的竞争相互作用仅在密切相关的分类单元之间发生，尽管有大量文献证明远距离的物种之间存在激烈的竞争。特别地，该假设忽略了远距离竞争者在有限的利基轴上的收敛，因此可能会错过远距离竞争者对焦点进化进化枝的神秘影响。例如，与亲缘关系远的竞争者可能成为进化枝内利基保守性的重要推动力，进化枝通常是归因于进化限制或非生物环境。在这里，我们提出了一种替代模型，该模型研究了当感兴趣的功能性状由无关的表型性状介导时，利基相似性如何演化，这与远距离相关的竞争者通常如此。该模型代表了一个重要的概念性步骤，旨在对竞争在相互作用物种的微观和宏观进化中所起的作用进行更准确，分类学上的包容性理解。