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Evolutionary dynamics of the elevational diversity gradient in passerine birds

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 5, pages 1259–1265 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Low-elevation regions harbour the majority of the world’s species diversity compared to high-elevation areas. This global gradient suggests that lowland species have had more time to diversify, or that net diversification rates have been higher in the lowlands. However, highlands seem to be cradles of diversity as they contain many young endemics, suggesting that their rates of speciation are exceptionally fast. Here we use a phylogenetic diversification model that accounts for the dispersal of species between different elevations to examine the evolutionary dynamics of the elevational diversity gradient in passerine birds, a group that has radiated globally to occupy almost all elevations and latitudes. We find strong support for a model in which passerines diversify at the same rate in the highlands and the lowlands but in which the per-capita rate of dispersal from high to low elevations is more than twice as fast as that in the reverse direction. This suggests that while there is no consistent trend in diversification across elevations, part of the diversity generated by highland regions migrates into the lowlands, thus setting up the observed gradient in passerine diversity. We find that this process drives tropical regions but for temperate areas, the analysis could be hampered by their lower richness. Despite their lower diversity, highland regions are disproportionally important for maintaining diversity in the adjacent lowlands.

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Fig. 1: The global EDG in passerine birds.
Fig. 2: The dynamics of the EDG are modelled by allowing rates of diversification to vary across the elevational states of species and by allowing transitions between different elevational states over time.

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Data availability

No datasets were generated during the current study. The data analysed were collected from previous reports27,49. The necessary files to replicate our study are available at figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14750652.

Code availability

We used R packages for analysing data. They are all available at CRAN: caper, phyloregion, DDD and secsse. The R code that we used to set up models, import data and analyse the output is available at figshare: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.14750652.

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Acknowledgements

The research of P.v.E. was facilitated by the Adaptive Life Program of the Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen. L.H.-A. thanks the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología of Mexico for funding (CVU 385304 L). R.S.E. thanks the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) for financial support through a VICI grant. A.L.P. is funded by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. We thank the Center for Information Technology of the University of Groningen for their support and for providing access to the Peregrine high-performance computing cluster.

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Author notes

  1. Paul van Els

    Present address: Sovon Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

  2. Leonel Herrera-Alsina

    Present address: School of Biological Sciences, University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, UK

  3. These authors contributed equally: Paul van Els, Leonel Herrera-Alsina.

  4. These authors jointly supervised this work: Alex L. Pigot, Rampal S. Etienne.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

    Paul van Els, Leonel Herrera-Alsina & Rampal S. Etienne

  2. Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research, Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London, London, UK

    Alex L. Pigot

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  1. Paul van Els
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Contributions

P.v.E. collected data. L.H.-A. and P.v.E. performed the analysis. R.S.E. and A.L.P. supervised the project. L.H.-A., P.v.E., A.L.P. and R.S.E. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Leonel Herrera-Alsina.

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van Els, P., Herrera-Alsina, L., Pigot, A.L. et al. Evolutionary dynamics of the elevational diversity gradient in passerine birds. Nat Ecol Evol 5, 1259–1265 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01515-y

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