Evolutionary history and environmental variability structure contemporary tropical vertebrate communities

Aim: Tropical regions harbour over half of the world's mammals and birds, but how their communities have assembled over evolutionary timescales remains unclear. To compare eco-evolutionary assembly processes between tropical mammals and birds, we tested how hypotheses concerning niche conservatism, environmental stability, environmental heterogeneity and time-for-speciation relate to tropical vertebrate community phylogenetic and functional structure. Location: Tropical rainforests worldwide. Time period: Present. Major taxa studied: Ground-dwelling and ground-visiting mammals and birds. Methods: We used in situ observations of species identified from systematic camera trap sampling as realized communities from 15 protected tropical rainforests in four tropical regions worldwide. We quantified standardized phylogenetic and functional structure for each community and estimated the multi-trait phylogenetic signal (PS) in ecological strategies for the four regional species pools of mammals and birds. Using linear regression models, we test three non-mutually exclusive hypotheses by comparing the relative importance of colonization time, palaeo-environmental changes in temperature and land cover since 3.3 Mya, contemporary seasonality in temperature and productivity and environmental heterogeneity for predicting community phylogenetic and functional structure. Results: Phylogenetic and functional structure showed non-significant yet varying tendencies towards clustering or dispersion in all communities. Mammals had stronger multi-trait PS in ecological strategies than birds (mean PS: mammal = 0.62, bird = 0.43). Distinct dominant processes were identified for mammal and bird communities. For mammals, colonization time and elevation range significantly predicted phylogenetic clustering and functional dispersion tendencies respectively. For birds, elevation range and contemporary temperature seasonality significantly predicted phylogenetic and functional clustering tenden