Spatial species‐richness gradients across scales: a meta‐analysis

作者：Richard Field, Bradford A. Hawkins, Howard V. Cornell, David J. Currie, José Alexandre Felizola Diniz‐Filho, Jean‐François Guégan, Dawn M. Kaufman, Jeremy T. Kerr, Gary G. Mittelbach, Thierry Oberdorff, Eileen M. O’Brien, John R. G. Turner · 发表于：Journal of Biogeography · 年份：2008 · DOI：10.1111/j.1365-2699.2008.01963.x · 被引用次数：759 · 研究领域：Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies、Species Distribution and Climate Change、Plant and animal studies

Abstract Aim We surveyed the empirical literature to determine how well six diversity hypotheses account for spatial patterns in species richness across varying scales of grain and extent. Location Worldwide. Methods We identified 393 analyses (‘cases’) in 297 publications meeting our criteria. These criteria included the requirement that more than one diversity hypothesis was tested for its relationship with species richness. We grouped variables representing the hypotheses into the following ‘correlate types’: climate/productivity, environmental heterogeneity, edaphics/nutrients, area, biotic interactions and dispersal/history (colonization limitation or other historical or evolutionary effect). For each case we determined the ‘primary’ variable: the one most strongly correlated with taxon richness. We defined ‘primacy’ as the proportion of cases in which each correlate type was represented by the primary variable, relative to the number of times it was studied. We tested for differences in both primacy and mean coefficient of determination of the primary variable between the hypotheses and between categories of five grouping variables: grain, extent, taxon (animal vs. plant), habitat medium (land vs. water) and insularity (insular vs. connected). Results Climate/productivity had the highest overall primacy, and environmental heterogeneity and dispersal/history had the lowest. Primacy of climate/productivity was much higher in large‐grain and large‐extent studies than at sm...