AdaScape 1.0: a coupled modelling tool to investigate the links between tectonics, climate, and biodiversity

Abstract

The interplay between tectonics and climate is known to impact the evolution and distribution of life forms, leading to present-day patterns of biodiversity. Numerical models that integrate the co-evolution of life and landforms are ideal tools to investigate the causal links between these earth system components. Here, we present a tool that couples an ecological–evolutionary model with a landscape evolution model (LEM). The former is based on the adaptive speciation of functional traits, where these traits can mediate ecological competition for resources, and includes dispersal and mutation processes. The latter is a computationally efficient LEM (FastScape) that predicts topographic relief based on the stream power law, hillslope diffusion, and orographic precipitation equations. We integrate these two models to illustrate the coupled behaviour between tectonic uplift and eco-evolutionary processes. Particularly, we investigate how changes in tectonic uplift rate and eco-evolutionary parameters (i.e. competition, dispersal, and mutation) influence speciation and thus the temporal and spatial patterns of biodiversity.