Climatic niches in phylogenetic comparative studies: a review of challenges and approaches

Studying the evolution of climatic niches through time in a phylogenetic comparative framework combines species distribution modeling with phylogenies. Phylogenetic comparative studies aid the understanding of the evolution of species environmental preferences by revealing the underlying evolutionary processes and causes, detecting the differences among groups of species or relative to evolutionary pattern of other phenotypic traits, but also act as a yardstick to gauge the adaptational potential under climate change. Because several alternatives exist on how to compute and represent the climatic niche, we here review and discuss the current state of the art and propose a best practice to use in comparative studies. Moreover we outline the common evolutionary models and available model-fitting methods and describe the procedure for ancestral niche reconstruction with the intention to give a broad overview and highlight the most advanced approaches for optimal niche-related comparative studies.