ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2023
Genomic estimates of mutation and substitution rates contradict the evolutionary speed hypothesis of the latitudinal diversity gradient.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Virulent Parasites Emerge in Hosts With Rising Temperatures.Global change biology · 2026Article
- Review
- Transition-Transversion Bias at theEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- Article
- Distinct latitudinal patterns of molecular rates across vertebrates.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Macrogenetics Approach Reveals Spatial Trends and Drivers of Mitochondrial Genetic Diversity at Different Biological Organization Levels in Tropical Western Atlantic Decapods.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Warmer is better for evolutionary rescue, driving a warm-to-cold bias in habitat colonization dynamics.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- A new era of mutation rate analyses: Concepts and methods.Zoological research · 2024Review
- Saccharomycotina yeasts defy long-standing macroecological patterns.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Genomic estimates of mutation and substitution rates contradict the evolutionary speed hypothesis of the latitudinal diversity gradient.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2023Article
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3 authors.
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Abstract
The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) refers to a decrease in biodiversity from the equator to the poles. The evolutionary speed hypothesis, backed by the metabolic theory of ecology, asserts that nucleotide mutation and substitution rates per site per year are higher and thereby speciation rates are higher at higher temperatures, generating the LDG. However, prior empirical investigations of the relationship between the temperature and mutation or substitution rate were based on a few genes and the results were mixed. We here revisit this relationship using genomic data. No significant correlation between the temperature and mutation rate is found in 13 prokaryotes or in 107 eukaryotes. An analysis of 234 diverse trios of bacterial taxa indicates that the synonymous substitution rate is not significantly associated with the growth temperature. The same data, however, reveal a significant negative association between the nonsynonymous substitution rate and temperature, which is explainable by a larger fraction of detrimental nonsynonymous mutations at higher temperatures due to a stronger demand for protein stability. We conclude that the evolutionary speed hypothesis of the LDG is unsupported by genomic data and advise that future mechanistic studies of the LDG should focus on other hypotheses.
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