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Ecological interactions are evolutionarily conserved across the entire tree of life

Nature volume 465, pages 918–921 (2010)Cite this article

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Abstract

Ecological interactions are crucial to understanding both the ecology and the evolution of organisms1,2. Because the phenotypic traits regulating species interactions are largely a legacy of their ancestors, it is widely assumed that ecological interactions are phylogenetically conserved, with closely related species interacting with similar partners2. However, the existing empirical evidence is inadequate to appropriately evaluate the hypothesis of phylogenetic conservatism in ecological interactions, because it is both ecologically and taxonomically biased. In fact, most studies on the evolution of ecological interactions have focused on specialized organisms, such as some parasites or insect herbivores3,4,5,6,7, belonging to a limited subset of the overall tree of life. Here we study the evolution of host use in a large and diverse group of interactions comprising both specialist and generalist acellular, unicellular and multicellular organisms. We show that, as previously found for specialized interactions, generalized interactions can be evolutionarily conserved. Significant phylogenetic conservatism of interaction patterns was equally likely to occur in symbiotic and non-symbiotic interactions, as well as in mutualistic and antagonistic interactions. Host-use differentiation among species was higher in phylogenetically conserved clades, irrespective of their generalization degree and taxonomic position within the tree of life. Our findings strongly suggest a shared pattern in the organization of biological systems through evolutionary time, mediated by marked conservatism of ecological interactions among taxa.

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Figure 1: How to study the evolution of both specialized and generalized interactions.
Figure 2: Differences between phylogenetically conserved and non-conserved clades in average host range per clade and modularity.
Figure 3: Ecological interactions are evolutionarily conserved across the entire tree of life.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. Bascompte, J. Bosch, A. González-Megías, P. Jordano, M. Lineham, M. Méndez, I. Reche, E.W. Schupp and S. Strauss for comments on a previous draft, R. Guimerà for kindly providing NETCARTO software, and B. Krasnov, C. Mitter, L. Navarro, J. Ollerton and J. M. Pleguezuelos for providing access to their data set. This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science (J.M.G., M.V. and F.P.) and by the Junta de Andalucía (J.M.G. and F.P.)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departamento de Ecología, Universidad de Granada, E-18071 Granada, Spain

    José M. Gómez

  2. Centro de Investigaciones sobre Desertificación, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas-Universidad de Valencia-Generalitat Valenciana, E-46470 Valencia, Spain

    Miguel Verdú

  3. Departamento de Genética, Universidad de Granada, E-18071 Granada, Spain

    Francisco Perfectti

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  1. José M. Gómez
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  2. Miguel Verdú
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  3. Francisco Perfectti
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Contributions

J.M.G., M.V. and F. P. designed the study, J.M.G. compiled the data set and performed the analysis of host use, M.V. performed the phylogenetic analyses, J.M.G. wrote a first version of the manuscript and all authors contributed to the final draft.

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Correspondence to José M. Gómez.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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This file contains Supplementary Tables 1-6, Supplementary Figure 1 with legend, Supplementary Data 1and Supplementary Notes 1-116 with References. (PDF 897 kb)

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Gómez, J., Verdú, M. & Perfectti, F. Ecological interactions are evolutionarily conserved across the entire tree of life. Nature 465, 918–921 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature09113

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