ORIGINAL ARTICLE doi:10.1111/evo.12547 Evolution of niche preference in Sphagnum peat mosses Matthew G. Johnson,1,2,3 Gustaf Granath,4,5,6 Teemu Tahvanainen, 7 Remy Pouliot,8 Hans K. Stenøien,9 Line Rochefort,8 Hakan˚ Rydin,4 and A. Jonathan Shaw1 1Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708 2Current Address: Chicago Botanic Garden, 1000 Lake Cook Road Glencoe, Illinois 60022 3E-mail:
[email protected] 4Department of Plant Ecology and Evolution, Evolutionary Biology Centre, Uppsala University, Norbyvagen¨ 18D, SE-752 36, Uppsala, Sweden 5School of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada 6Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, SE-750 07, Uppsala, Sweden 7Department of Biology, University of Eastern Finland, P.O. Box 111, 80101, Joensuu, Finland 8Department of Plant Sciences and Northern Research Center (CEN), Laval University Quebec, Canada 9Department of Natural History, Norwegian University of Science and Technology University Museum, Trondheim, Norway Received March 26, 2014 Accepted September 23, 2014 Peat mosses (Sphagnum)areecosystemengineers—speciesinborealpeatlandssimultaneouslycreateandinhabitnarrowhabitat preferences along two microhabitat gradients: an ionic gradient and a hydrological hummock–hollow gradient. In this article, we demonstrate the connections between microhabitat preference and phylogeny in Sphagnum.Usingadatasetof39speciesof Sphagnum,withan18-locusDNAalignmentandanecologicaldatasetencompassingthreelargepublishedstudies,wetested