Multiple Hypotheses
• Abiotic
– Environmental stability
– Antiquity of the tropics
– Area
– Glacial fluxes
• Biotic
– Habitat heterogeneity
– Productivity
– Competition
– Geographic ranges (Rapoport's rule)
• Random causes
– Mid-domain effect
Environmental stability and predictability
Tropics tend to be more stable over short and long time scales – fewer extinctions, more specializing for predictable environments
Antiquity of the tropics
Tropical biomes have existed for longer time periods compared to higher latitude biomes; therefore, tropical regions have accumulated more species than other high latitude areas
Area
The tropics occupy more area on Earth than other regions and biodiversity is known to increase with area
Why would biodiversity
increase with area habitat?
Glacial fluxes
Glacial expansions in the Pleistocene caused extinctions in high latitude regions
Insufficient time to return to the original biodiversity
levels of these regions
Habitat heterogeneity
Generally, higher species richness levels are associated with heterogeneous habitats; and tropical areas tend to be more heterogeneous than high latitude biomes
Productivity
Higher productivity levels in tropical areas provide more energy to support more species of primary consumers (and more predators too)
Competition
By keeping populations of species at low levels, competition allows more species to coexist in competitor-rich tropical communities
Geographic ranges (Rapoport’s rule)
Tropical species tend to have smaller geographical ranges more species can coexist in tropical than in temperate regions
Mid-domain effect
If species’ latitudinal ranges were randomly shuffled within two boundaries (the poles) species' ranges would tend to overlap more toward the center between these boundaries than toward the boundaries
Species’ latitudinal ranges
Shuffle
N. Pole
Equator
S. Pole
Integrative explanations
Speciation, extinction, and immigration (Wiens and
Donoghue, 2004)
– Tropics are older and larger higher speciation
and lower extinction rates
– Tropics are more benign and productive species become specialists and have limited dispersal
Evaluating processes and explanations
– Different processes act at different scales
– Combination of explanations is important
– Important difference between maintenance and
creation of biodiversity
Which processes maintain vs. create?
Elevation gradients
Species richness tends to increase with elevation until a certain threshold and then decreases
Causes vary depending on the species
Environmental factors
• Temperature
• Air pressure (oxygen)
• Precipitation
Peninsula effect: Decreasing species richness
toward the tip of peninsulas
Smaller area – higher extinction
Isolation positio
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