Data from: The Sarracenia alata pitcher plant system and obligate arthropod inquilines should be considered an evolutionary community

Aim: The Sarracenia alata pitcher plant and inquiline species comprise an ecological community. These inquilines span the continuum in their ecological association with the host pitcher plant, from species that contain little-to-no interaction with the plant to species that are completely dependent on the plant for their entire life cycle. We are interested in testing if degree of ecological dependence is positively correlated with a shared evolutionary history, and in identifying members of this community that display concordant phylogeographic structure. Location: Southeastern United States Methods: We collected genome-wide sequence data from a set of arthropods that are ecologically-associated with the plant to estimate comparative phylogeographic patterns among the species. We estimated species tree distributions from biallelic unlinked SNP data and used phylogeographic concordance factors (PCFs) to test degree of phylogeographic concordance among community members. In addition, we calculated AMOVAs and FST values to identify population genetic structure across the landscape, and compared these traditional values to the tree-based approach. Results: Obligate members of the pitcher plant community display concordant phylogeographic patterns, suggesting their ecological dependence has manifested itself into a shared evolutionary history. In contrast, two spider species do not contain significant population genetic structure or similar phylogeographic histories, highlighting their loose association with the host pitcher plant. Main conclusion: The Sarracenia alata pitcher plant system should be considered an evolutionary community, where multiple members sharing strong ecological interactions also display concordant phylogeographic structure. This work demonstrates that PCFs provide an important quantitative measure into assessing community structure and illustrate how simulations can be used to assess significance of shared patterns of phylogeographic structure across the landscape