UCLA

The emerging field of spatial phylogenetics allows scientists to understand biodiversityand community ecology with the added lens of deep time. Biodiversity metrics that account for the shared evolutionary history in an ecosystem can give insight into the environmental filters that drive patterns of community assembly, and can help guide conservation efforts toward preservation of functional diversity. Here I present a new method: Community Phylogenetic Analysis at Speedy Time (C-PHAST), which builds on existing frameworks to produce a comprehensive pipeline for analysis of large-scale phylogenetic dispersion and community assembly. I apply this new method to characterize the phylodiversity of birds, plants

squamates, mammals and butterflies that are endemic to California. I create high resolutionvisualizations of the distribution of phylogenetic diversity across these clades within California, and find that patterns of over- and under- dispersion have low relative cross-clade correlation. Cumulative evolutionary history across clades reveals patches of overdispersion in northeastern California, in the southern Palm Springs desert regions, and in select coastal areas. I use the findings of this pipeline to pinpoint unmanaged regions harboring exceptionally high evolutionary history across taxonomic groups as recommendations for future conservation efforts.