Using herbarium records to explore the ecological differentiation between closely‐related tree species in tropical Africa

Background: Tree hypothesis are invoked to explain species distribution and evolutionary history of tree clades in tropical Africa: 1) The forest refuge hypothesis postulates that contractions of lowland forests during the climatic oscillations of the Pleistocene could have driven allopatric speciation between fragmented populations; 2) The ecological gradient hypothesis states that environmental gradients promote parapatric speciation; 3) The vanishing refuge hypothesis reconciles the two previous hypotheses and postulated a diversification process through climate-driven habitat fragmentation and exposure to new environments. Disentangling the respective influence of environmental and historical factors requires information on phylogeny, as well as information on geography and the environmental space used by species. In this study, we aimed to determine the environmental factors constraining the distribution of African tree species in order to explore ecological divergence and speciation processes.

Method: We focused on three African Erythrophleum species (Fabaceae, Caesalpinioideae) that are economically and socially important, providing timber and non-timber resources. Erythrophleum ivorense, Erythrophleum suaveolens and Erythrophleum africanum also show contrasted distributions in Africa. To determine species climatic niche, we used a combination of species presence data gathered from 606 herbarium records and environmental factors (19 BIOCLIM variables). We used Species Distribution Models (SDM, MaxEnt algorithm) in combination with similarity metrics to quantify the degree of niche divergence between species.

Results: We showed that the distribution of Erythrophleum species are substantially determined by climate (especially annual rainfall and temperature range) and support the ecological gradient hypothesis. Moreover, the main traits (e.g. wood density and leaf area) and growth rates previously reported among Erythrophleum species confirmed a differential adaptation to drought.
Conclusion: Herbarium data provide valuable information on the distribution of species over the whole range. In tropical regions where extensive inventories data are extremely rare, herbarium records in combination with presence-only SDM offer opportunities to explore speciation processes.