Diversification and community assembly of the world’s largest tropical island

Aim: The species diversity and endemism of tropical biotas are major contributors to global biodiversity, but the factors underlying the formation of these systems remain poorly understood. Location: The world's largest tropical island, New Guinea. Time period: Miocene to present. Major taxa studied: Passerine birds. Methods: We first generated a species-level phylogeny of all native breeding passerine birds to analyse spatial and elevational patterns of species richness, species age and phylogenetic diversity. Second, we used an existing dataset on bill morphology to analyse spatial and elevational patterns of functional diversity. Results: The youngest New Guinean species are principally …