1 Center for Global Change and Ecological Forecasting, Zhejiang Zhoushan Island Ecosystem Observation and Research Station, Zhejiang Tiantong Forest Ecosystem National Observation and Research Station, Institute of Eco-Chongming, School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China.
2 Center for Global Change and Ecological Forecasting, Zhejiang Zhoushan Island Ecosystem Observation and Research Station, Zhejiang Tiantong Forest Ecosystem National Observation and Research Station, Institute of Eco-Chongming, School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China; Institute for Global Change Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA.
3 Department of Biology, Concordia University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
4 Operation Wallacea, Wallace House, Old Bolingbroke, Spilsby, UK; Department of Biological Sciences, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.
5 School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences (GEES) and Birmingham Institute of Forest Research, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK; cE3c-Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Azorean Biodiversity Group, CHANGE-Global Change and Sustainability Institute, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Environment, Universidade Dos Açores, Angra do Heroísmo, Portugal.
6 Center for Global Change and Ecological Forecasting, Zhejiang Zhoushan Island Ecosystem Observation and Research Station, Zhejiang Tiantong Forest Ecosystem National Observation and Research Station, Institute of Eco-Chongming, School of Ecological and Environmental Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China; State Key Laboratory for Vegetation Structure, Function and Construction (VegLab), MOE Key Laboratory of Biosystems Homeostasis and Protection, College of Life Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China. Electronic address: six@zju.edu.cn.

The species pool is a fundamental concept with the potential to connect ecological and evolutionary processes in community ecology and biogeography. However, current definitions of the concept primarily focus on contemporary ecological processes, ignoring the historical and evolutionary processes that generated the species pool. We propose a phylogenetic framework that defines the species pool by inferring evolutionary connectivity between communities in a biogeographic region. Our framework is better suited to addressing questions regarding assembly processes occurring over long time periods, offering deeper evolutionary insights for community ecology and conservation biogeography.