Text Mining of Expert Knowledge for the Construction of a Global Habitat Space of Micranthes and Saxifraga Reveals Multiple Avenues of Arctic Biome Assembly

• Published in: International journal of plant sciences Vol. 180; no. 3; pp. 240 - 252
• Main Author: Hoffmann, Matthias H.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Chicago The University of Chicago Press 01.03.2019; University of Chicago, acting through its Press
• Subjects: Assembly; Data mining; Ecological monitoring; Ecosystems; Geographical distribution; Habitats; Micranthes; Mountains; Northern Hemisphere; Polar environments; Principal components analysis; Recruitment; Redundancy; Saxifraga; Species; parallel differentiation; expert knowledge; convergence; arctic; Micranthes; text mining; continuous characters; habitat space; Saxifraga
• ISSN: 1058-5893; 1537-5315
• DOI: 10.1086/701830

Premise of research. The biogeographic and ecological origins and recruitment of arctic species were analyzed in a text-mining framework of expert knowledge. The newly defined multidimensional habitat spaces of clades and their geographical distribution were used to reveal unique and parallel avenues of a biome assembly. Methodology. Printed and online floristic works were screened for distribution data and habitat information. Distribution data were directly used to infer diversity centers of clades and their arctic members. From the habitat information, a multidimensional habitat matrix was constructed and analyzed via principal component analysis (PCA). The obtained species score matrix was used to infer the size—that is, the length of the habitat space of the clades along the principal component axes, which was subsequently assessed for similarities and differences. Pivotal results. The diversity centers of the clades were widely distributed across the northern hemisphere, mostly in mountains. Some areas may have served multiple times as sources for arctic species. The process of defining the habitat space offers the opportunity to compare this important ecological characteristic of species across the study area and reveals ecological differentiations. The size of the habitat space of the clades is significantly and positively related to their species numbers. The similarity of the occupied habitat space of the clades forms a continuum in pairwise comparisons. Some clades within and between the genera were similar in the size and locations of their habitat spaces, revealing considerable ecological parallelisms occurring partly in distant areas. Conclusions. The recruitment of arctic species in Micranthes and Saxifraga reveals as a complex geographical and ecological pattern that is part of a continuous variation rather than discrete evolutionary events. Considerable redundancy and parallelisms seem to be the rule rather than the exception for the assembly of plants in ecosystems.