Do traits and phylogeny tell us the same thing about communities?

Background/Question/Methods
The recent expansion of the use of phylogenetic information in ecological research has been predicated on a correlation between phylogenetic distances and underlying trait differences among species. Essentially, researchers assume that phylogeny is a stand-in for unmeasured traits. However, analyses that examine both phylogeny in traits in ecological communities across gradients have sometimes found weak or even negative correlations between phylogenetic and trait diversity patterns. The reasons for a lack of correlation could be methodological, evolutionary, or ecological. Here we assess the literature and use models to examine the reasons why there might be a lack of a correlation.

Results/Conclusions
Studies that examine trait and phylogenetic patterns across environment or disturbance gradients with extreme conditions sometimes indicate mismatches if the dominant optimal trait is convergent. However, in these circumstances, species appear distantly related because species either facilitate one another or utilize diverse niches despite strong environmental stress. The expectation of a relationship between traits and phylogeny is sensitive to the evolutionary model, the phylogenetic topology, rate of evolution, and nonrandom sorting of species into assemblages. A lack of concordance can actually tell us a lot of species evolution and ecological processes