title: Phylogenies support out-of-equilibrium models of biodiversity.
abstract: There is a long tradition in ecology of studying models of biodiversity at equilibrium. These models, including the influential Neutral Theory of Biodiversity, have been successful at predicting major macroecological patterns, such as species abundance distributions. But they have failed to predict macroevolutionary patterns, such as those captured in phylogenetic trees. Here, we develop a model of biodiversity in which all individuals have identical demographic rates, metacommunity size is allowed to vary stochastically according to population dynamics, and speciation arises naturally from the accumulation of point mutations. We show that this model generates phylogenies matching those observed in nature if the metacommunity is out of equilibrium. We develop a likelihood inference framework that allows fitting our model to empirical phylogenies, and apply this framework to various mammalian families. Our results corroborate the hypothesis that biodiversity dynamics are out of equilibrium.
authors.affiliation: École Normale Supérieure, Institut de Biologie, CNRS UMR 8197, 46 rue d'Ulm, 75005 Paris, France; Collège de France, Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Biology, CNRS UMR 7241, 11 place Marcelin-Berthelot, 75005 Paris, France.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Manceau
authors.forename: Amaury
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lambert
authors.forename: Hélène
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Morlon
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004463:Ecology / Q000379:methods*; D049810:Genetic Speciation; D008322:Mammals; D008954:Models, Biological; D010802:Phylogeny; D011157:Population Dynamics
keywords: Birth-death models; Diversification; Extinction; Macroevolution; Metacommunity dynamics; Neutral Biodiversity Theory; Speciation; Speciation by Genetic Differentiation