Searching across hundreds of databases
The causes of continental patterns in species richness continue to spur heated discussion. Hypotheses based on ambient energy have dominated the debate, but are increasingly being challenged by hypotheses that model richness as the overlap of species ranges, ultimately controlled by continental range dynamics of individual species. At the heart of this controversy lies the question of whether species richness of individual grid cells is controlled by local factors, or reflects larger-scale spatial patterns in the turnover of species' ranges. Here, we develop a new approach based on assemblage dispersion fields, formed by overlaying the geographic ranges of all species co-occurring in a grid cell. We created dispersion fields for all tetrapods of South America, and characterized the orientation and shape of dispersion fields as a vector field. The resulting maps demonstrate the existence of macro-structures in the turnover of biotic similarity at continental scale that are congruent among vertebrate classes. These structures underline the importance of continental-scale processes for species richness in individual assemblages.
Pubmed ID: 31980659 RIS Download
Publication data is provided by the National Library of Medicine ® and PubMed ®. Data is retrieved from PubMed ® on a weekly schedule. For terms and conditions see the National Library of Medicine Terms and Conditions.
A global evaluation of the conservation status of plant and animal species. The IUCN Red List plays a prominent role in guiding conservation activities of governments, NGOs and scientific institutions. The introduction in 1994 of a scientifically rigorous approach to determine risks of extinction that is applicable to all species, has become a world standard. In order to produce The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, the IUCN Global Species Programme working with the IUCN Survival Commission (SSC) and with members of IUCN draws on and mobilizes a network of scientists and partner organizations working in almost every country in the world, who collectively hold what is likely the most complete scientific knowledge base on the biology and conservation status of species. The IUCN Red List is underpinned by information management tools (the Species Information Service) which facilitate the collection, management and processing of species data from workshop to publication on The IUCN Red List.
View all literature mentionsThe SciCrunch Infrastructure was developed as a cooperative data platform to be used by diverse communities in making data more FAIR.
scicrunch.org
