Rafael Wüest

Amt für Landschaft und Natur Kanton Zürich · Fachstelle Naturschutz

Aim Predicting the spatial distribution of species assemblages remains an important challenge in biogeography. Recently, it has been proposed to extend correlative species distribution models (SDMs) by taking into account (a) covariance between species occurrences in so‐called joint species distribution models (JSDMs) and (b) ecological assembly r...

Recent years have seen an exponential increase in the amount of data available in all sciences and application domains. Macroecology is part of this "Big Data" trend, with a strong rise in the volume of data that we are using for our research. Here, we summarize the most recent developments in macroecology in the age of Big Data that were presented...

Aim Separating the biotic and abiotic factors controlling species distributions has been a long‐standing challenge in ecology and biogeography. Joint species distribution models (JSDMs) have emerged as a promising statistical framework towards this objective by simultaneously modelling the environmental responses of multiple species and approximati...

Abstract To understand the state and trends in biodiversity beyond the scope of monitoring programs, biodiversity indicators must be comparable across inventories. Species richness (SR) is one of the most widely used biodiversity indicators. However, as SR increases with the size of the area sampled, inventories using different plot sizes are hardl...

Detecting the extrinsic selective pressures shaping genomic variation is critical for a better understanding of adaptation and for forecasting evolutionary responses of natural populations to changing environmental conditions. With increasing availability of geo-referenced environmental data, landscape genomics provides unprecedented insights into...

Speciation rates vary greatly among taxa and regions and are shaped by both biotic and abiotic factors. However, the relative importance and interactions of these factors are not well understood. Here we investigate the potential drivers of speciation rates in South American freshwater fishes, the most diverse continental vertebrate fauna, by exami...

Climate’s effect on global biodiversity is typically viewed through the lens of temperature, humidity and resulting ecosystem productivity1,2,3,4,5,6. However, it is not known whether biodiversity depends solely on these climate conditions, or whether the size and fragmentation of these climates are also crucial. Here we shift the common perspectiv...

Climate is an important limiting factor of species’ niches and it is therefore regularly included in ecological applications such as species distribution models (SDMs). Climate predictors are often used in the form of long-term mean values, yet many species experience wide climatic variation over their lifespan and within their geographical range w...

How traits affect speciation is a long-standing question in evolution. We investigate whether speciation rates are affected by the traits themselves or by the rates of their evolution, in hummingbirds, a clade with great variation in speciation rates, morphology and ecological niches. Further, we test two opposing hypotheses, postulating that speci...

Niche partitioning is an important mechanism that allows species to coexist. Within mutualistic interaction networks, diel niche partitioning, i.e., partitioning of resources throughout the day, has been neglected. We explored diel niche partitioning of a plant-hummingbird network in the Brazilian Atlantic forest for nine months. To evaluate diel p...

Landscape dynamics are widely thought to govern the tempo and mode of continental radiations, yet the effects of river network rearrangements on dispersal and lineage diversification remain poorly understood. We integrated an unprecedented occurrence dataset of 4,967 species with a newly compiled, time-calibrated phylogeny of South American freshwa...

The European Alps are highly rich in species, but their future may be threatened by ongoing changes in human land use and climate. Here, we reconstructed vegetation, temperature, human impact and livestock over the past ~12,000 years from Lake Sulsseewli, based on sedimentary ancient plant and mammal DNA, pollen, spores, chironomids, and microcharc...

Community ecologists have made great advances in understanding how natural communities can be both diverse and stable by studying communities as interaction networks. However, focus has been on interaction networks aggregated over time, neglecting the consequences of the seasonal organization of interactions (hereafter 'seasonal structure') for com...

Predictions from species distribution models (SDMs) that rely on presence-only data are strongly influenced by how pseudo-absences are derived. However, which strategies to generate pseudo-absences give rise to faithful SDMs in complex mountainous terrain, and whether species-specific or generic strategies perform better remain open questions. Here...

Landscape dynamics and river network rearrangements are widely thought to shape the diversity of Neotropical freshwater fishes, the most species-rich continental vertebrate fauna on Earth. Yet the effects of hydrogeographic changes on fish dispersal and diversification remain poorly understood. Here we integrate an unprecedented occurrence dataset...

Die Waldstandortkunde ist eine wichtige Grundlage für die waldbauliche Planung, indem sie Standorttypen definiert und für diese Baumartenempfehlungen formuliert. In der Schweiz wurde im Rahmen von Projekten «Nachhaltigkeit und Erfolgskontrolle im Schutzwald» (NaiS) in den letzten Jahren ein Standard von Standorttypen erarbeitet, der landesweite Bed...

Aim Climate is an essential element of species’ niche estimates in many current ecological applications such as species distribution models (SDMs). Climate predictors are often used in the form of long-term mean values. Yet, climate can also be described as spatial or temporal variability for variables like temperature or precipitation. Such variab...

Modellierte Verbreitungskarten für die häufigsten Gehölzarten der Schweiz Um der Waldbewirtschaftung und -planung sowie der Forschung und dem Naturschutz eine neue Grundlage zur Verfügung zu stellen, wurde im Projekt MoGLI (Modellierung Gehölzarten LFI) die potenzielle Verbreitung der häufigsten Gehölzarten für den Schweizer Wald modelliert. Zur rä...

A primary goal of biodiversity research is to uncover the processes acting in space and time to create the global distribution of species richness. However, we currently lack an understanding of how recent versus ancient biodiversity dynamics shape patterns of diversity for most groups. Here, we introduce a method to partition lineage turnover into...

A primary goal of biodiversity research is to uncover the processes acting in space and time to create the global distribution of species richness. However, we currently lack an understanding of how recent versus ancient biodiversity dynamics shape patterns of diversity for most groups. Here, we introduce a method to partition lineage turnover into...

Background: Under ongoing climate and land-use change, biodiversity is continuously decreasing and monitoring biodiversity is becoming increasingly important. National Forest Inventory (NFI) programmes provide valuable time-series data on biodiversity and thus contribute to assessments of the state and trends in biodiversity, as well as ecosystem...

It is generally accepted that the spatial distribution of neutral genetic diversity within a species’ native range mostly depends on effective population size, demographic history, and geographic position. However, it is unclear how genetic diversity at adaptive loci correlates with geographic peripherality or with habitat suitability within the ec...

Modern multifunctional forest management can profit from high-quality information on the potential distribution of woody species generated by species distribution models (SDMs). Forest structure is an important factor in determining the distribution of woody species in forests, for example because it affects light conditions within forest stands. R...

Aim Local richness is a result of both regional richness and local site‐specific factors. We quantify the effects of different regional (dispersal, environmental filtering) and local (habitat selection) community assembly processes in the Cape reeds (Restionaceae) of the Cape flora and test if community assembly processes vary spatially. Location...

Aim: Statistical species distribution models (SDMs) are the most common tool to predict the impact of climate change on biodiversity. They can be tuned to fit relationships at various levels of complexity (defined here as parameterization complexity, number of predictors, and multicollinearity) that may co-determine whether projections to novel cli...

Aim Fragmented distributions should show immigration and diversification dynamics consistent with the predictions of island biogeography theory. We test whether this applies to the fragmented Cape fynbos vegetation. Location Southern Africa, Cape Floristic Region (CFR). Taxon Angiosperms, Restionaceae (restios). Methods We used a large occurrenc...

Functional trait composition is increasingly recognized as key to better understand and predict community responses to environmental gradients. Predictive approaches traditionally model the weighted mean trait values of communities (CWMs) as a function of environmental gradients. However, most approaches treat traits as independent regardless of kn...

In ecology, the true causal structure for a given problem is often not known, and several plausible models and thus model predictions exist. It has been claimed that using weighted averages of these models can reduce prediction error, as well as better reflect model selection uncertainty. These claims, however, are often demonstrated by isolated ex...

Aim We aimed to assess the relative influence of the historical and contemporary processes determining global patterns of current β‐diversity. Specifically, we quantified the relative effects of contemporary climate and historical plate tectonics on β‐diversity at different phylogenetic scales. Location Global. Time Period Contemporaneous. Major...

Background The taxonomy of pines (genus Pinus) is widely accepted and a robust gene tree based on entire plastome sequences exists. However, there is a large discrepancy in estimated divergence times of major pine clades among existing studies, mainly due to differences in fossil placement and dating methods used. We currently lack a dated molecula...

Convergent adaptive evolution of species' ecological niches-i.e., the appearance of similar niches in independent lineages-is the result of natural selection acting on niche-related species traits ("traits" hereafter) and contrasts with neutral evolution [1-4]. Although trait convergences are recognized as being of importance at the species scale,...

In order to advance long-term sustainable development of land use systems against risks arising from multiple aspects of global change STACCATO plans to quantify the sensitivity of ecosystem functions (ESF) and the services (ESS) to environmental pressures in representative agriculturally dominated landscapes in Europe. The focus is on local as wel...

Background The taxonomy of the genus Pinus is widely accepted and a well-resolved phylogeny based on entire plastome sequences exists. However, there is a large discrepancy in estimated divergence times of major pine clades among existing studies mainly due to differences in fossil placement and dating methods used. We currently lack a dated molecu...

1. While fire induced changes in biodiversity are well documented, less is known about how fire impacts life history variation and diversity of functional traits that represent distinct strategies for persistence in fire-driven ecosystems. One example is the dichotomy in which ‘resprouter’ species usually survive fires to produce new growth, while...

Climate is a main predictor of biodiversity on a global scale, yet how climate availability affects niche evolution remains poorly explored. Here we assess how inter-continental climate differences may affect the evolution of climate niches, and suggest three possible processes: niche truncation along major environmental gradients, inter-continenta...

Species distribution models (SDMs) are widely used to explain and predict species ranges and environmental niches. They are most commonly constructed by inferring species' occurrence–environment relationships using statistical and machine-learning methods. The variety of methods that can be used to construct SDMs (e.g. generalized linear/additive m...

Understanding the drivers of population divergence, speciation and species persistence is of great interest to molecular ecology, especially for species-rich radiations inhabiting the world's biodiversity hotspots. The toolbox of population genomics holds great promise for addressing these key issues, especially if genomic data are analyzed within...

Evolutionary adaptation is a key driver of species' range dynamics. Understanding the factors that affect rates of adaptation at range margins is thus crucial for interpreting and predicting changes in species' ranges. The spatial structure of environmental conditions is one of the determinants of whether and how quickly adaptations occur. However,...

One of the most common trends in plant evolution, loss of self-incompatibility and ensuing increases in selfing, is generally assumed to be associated with a suite of phenotypic changes, notably a reduction of floral size, termed the selfing syndrome. We investigate whether floral morphological traits indeed decrease in a deterministic fashion afte...

Aim Our aim was to seek explanations for the differences in the diversity among the austral continents by comparing the diversification rates and patterns in the grass subfamily Danthonioideae. We asked specifically whether diversification is density dependent, whether it is different for each continent, and whether immigration rates impact on dive...

The origins of ecological diversity in continental species assemblages have long intrigued biogeographers. We apply phylogenetic comparative analyses to disentangle the evolutionary patterns of ecological niches in an assemblage of European birds. We compare phylogenetic patterns in trophic, habitat and climatic niche components. Europe. From polyg...

Supporting figures and tables.

Table of avian niche traits.

Fire has been proposed as a factor explaining the exceptional plant species richness found in Mediterranean regions. A fire response trait that allows plants to cope with frequent fire by either reseeding or resprouting could differentially affect rates of species diversification. However, little is known about the generality of the effects of diff...

Summer pastures in the Swiss Alps are currently affected by land-use changes that cause a decrease in biodiversity. Although these habitats make up one-third of the whole Swiss agricultural area, direct payments dedicated to support their management are very low. Current political instruments do not support efforts to conserve the biodiversity in t...

Aim We sought to understand the variables that limit the distribution range of a clade (here the danthonioid grasses). We tested time, area of origin, habitat suitability, disjunction width and nature, and wind direction as possible range determinants. Location Global, but predominantly the Southern Hemisphere. Methods We mapped the range of the su...