Information, the Hidden Side of Life by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2019-01-07T00:00:00+00:00

3.4. Phylogeny of communities: biology in the arena

The young discipline of phylogeny attempts to grasp the biocoenosis of the ecosystems through different markedly biological methods. The avowed object of the direction of the search is an understanding of the assemblage of the species, and ultimately their conservation within the ecosystems. We may content ourselves with examining the distributions of species and their characteristics in ecological niches. However, one particular approach that originated notably in the thinking of Cam Webb stressed the importance of the phylogeny of the species, or, in other words, their evolutionary history. His central hypothesis was that phylogenetically near species (or relatives, in evolutionary terms) must occupy ecological niches that are equally near (Webb et al. 2002). For example, mammals that returned to water (after their ancestors colonized land) are closely related. Let us now consider how a piece of biological information can contribute to the conservation of the ecosystems.

The phylogeny school believes that the distribution of the niches within a community results from the phylogenetics that link its constituent populations. Because of, in particular, molecular marker techniques and the associated statistical methods that have been in use for some years, the hypothesis has become more accessible. While this hypothesis is attractive, it should be treated with care. Nevertheless, using a combination of ecological approaches (features/niches) and biological approaches (genomes), we can get progressively closer to an understanding of the coexistence and diversity of the species in a community. We can perhaps soon make a connection among their spatial distributions, their networks of interactions and their workings.

Much of the promise of this phylogeny-oriented approach stems from the fact that it builds a bridge between biological information of the genetic kind and information that relates to species and their ecology. It also bridges coarse scales of evolutionary and regional types, and fine scales (such as local populations). To be more exact, however, the approach underlying phylogeny allows us to quantify collective genetic information into a higher organizational level, namely into that of species. Using these metrics, modified as necessary, we can quantify genetic information as it is distributed in a community through speciation (that is, the appearance of new species). We can also quantify the distribution of ecological information in a metagenome that results notably from its migration among different regions. Thus, the phylogeny of communities inherently studies the flow of information among an ecosystem’s biological compartments at different scales of space and time.

This biology-inspired approach is at the border of the two types of information explored in this book, namely genetic information and species-related information. The information concept receives inadequate attention in ecology, as well as in biology, as we have seen. Can it now open a fruitful channel for a hoped-for synthesis of the existing analyses? The concept of information, originally theorized by physicists studying communication signals, induced in some early ecologists a belief that true progress in understanding ecosystems could come from physics. Such a belief was perhaps a mistake. So what are the most

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