0000000001302508
AUTHOR
Richard Field
Coefficient shifts in geographical ecology: an empirical evaluation of spatial and non-spatial regression
12 páginas, 4 figuras, 3 tablas.
sPlotOpen – An environmentally balanced, open‐access, global dataset of vegetation plots
Datos disponibles en https://github.com/fmsabatini/sPlotOpen_Code
Diversification in evolutionary arenas - assessment and synthesis
Abstract Understanding how and why rates of evolutionary diversification vary is a central issue in evolutionary biology and ecology. The concept of adaptive radiation has attracted much interest, but is metaphorical and verbal in nature, making it difficult to quantitatively compare different evolutionary lineages or geographic regions. In addition, the causes of evolutionary stasis are relatively neglected. Here we review the central concepts in the evolutionary diversification literature and bring these together by proposing a general framework for estimating rates of diversification and quantifying their underlying dynamics, which can be applied across clades and regions and across spat…
Spatial patterns of woody plant and bird diversity: functional relationships or environmental effects?
Aim To understand cross-taxon spatial congruence patterns of bird and woody plant species richness. In particular, to test the relative roles of functional relationships between birds and woody plants, and the direct and indirect environmental effects on broad-scale species richness of both groups. Location Kenya. Methods Based on comprehensive range maps of all birds and woody plants (native species > 2.5 m in height) in Kenya, we mapped species richness of both groups. We distinguished species richness of four different avian frugivore guilds (obligate, partial, opportunistic and non-frugivores) and fleshy-fruited and non-fleshy-fruited woody plants. We used structural equation modelli…
Global endemics-area relationships of vascular plants
Endemics–Area Relationships (EARs)are fundamental in theoretical and applied biogeography for understanding distribution patterns and promoting biodiversity conservation. However, calculating EARs for vascular plant species from existing data is problematic because of biased knowledge of endemic species distributions and differences between taxonomies. We aimed to overcome these challenges by developing a new standardized global dataset based on expert knowledge to produce a set of global EARs. We developed a nested circle design, with grain sizes of 10 4 , 10 5 , 10 6 , 10 7 , and 10 8 km 2 , respectively, and a global distribution of plots based on a stratified random scheme. The number …
Plot - A new tool for global vegetation analyses
23Biodiversity Conservation Department, ISPRA – Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, Rome, Italy
Woody plants and the prediction of climate-change impacts on bird diversity.
Current methods of assessing climate-induced shifts of species distributions rarely account for species interactions and usually ignore potential differences in response times of interacting taxa to climate change. Here, we used species-richness data from 1005 breeding bird and 1417 woody plant species in Kenya and employed model-averaged coefficients from regression models and median climatic forecasts assembled across 15 climate-change scenarios to predict bird species richness under climate change. Forecasts assuming an instantaneous response of woody plants and birds to climate change suggested increases in future bird species richness across most of Kenya whereas forecasts assuming str…
Diversification in evolutionary arenas – assessment and synthesis
Understanding how and why rates of evolutionary diversification vary is a central issue in evolutionary biology, ecology and biogeography. The concept of adaptive radiation has attracted much interest, but is metaphorical and verbal in nature, making it difficult to quantitatively compare different evolutionary lineages or geographic regions. In addition, the causes of evolutionary stasis are relatively neglected. Here we review the central concepts in the evolutionary diversification literature and bring these together by proposing a general framework for studying rates of diversification and quantifying their underlying dynamics, which can be applied across clades and regions and across s…