Global desert rodent assemblages do not show phylogenetic nor morphological community structure

What is it about?

Community structure is the study of the characteristics of the putative nonrandom assembly (structure) of ecological communities, such as that of overdispersion vs. clumping. Here, I examined whether desert rodent communities around the world are indeed structured nonrandomly from a larger species pool. Most of the communities that I examined seem to be randomly assembled from a larger species pool relative to phylogenetic relationships and relative to their cranial and mandibular attributes.

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Why is it important?

Community phylogenetics is a relatively new approach to study a classical topic in community ecology, that of the assembly patterns of ecological communities. In this approach, phylogenetic relationships are used as indirect measures of niche (i.e. closely related species are expected to share a similar niche than distantly related species)--this is thought to be an improvement over the use of taxonomic hierarchies. Recently researchers have been experimenting with the use of morphological dendrograms as alternatives (or as supplements) to molecular phylogenies to study (morphological) community structure. Perhaps what's novel about my work is the use of the geometric morphometric approach to estimate morphological structure.

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