Species Richness and Beta Diversity Patterns of American Marsupials

Cerezer, Felipe O.; Cáceres, Nilton C.; Baselga, Andrés

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-88800-8_13-1

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

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“…Understanding the mechanisms that generate and maintain patterns of species richness can provide valuable insights for understanding diversity (Cerezer, Cáceres, & Baselga, 2022;Cerezer, Machac, et al, 2022) and predicting the impacts of future climate changes on it. We described the geographical pattern of Chinese lizard richness in detail at the country and regional scales, and We did not include snakes in this study, because of worries regarding the less complete knowledge of their phylogeny and distribution (compared to lizards).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lizard richness in mainland China is more strongly correlated with energy and climatic stability than with diversification rates

Liang,

Meiri

2023

Journal of Biogeography

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AimContemporary environmental, historical and evolutionary factors are increasingly used to decipher the drivers of spatial patterns of species richness. Evidence of such correlations for Chinese reptiles is scarce and poorly understood. We therefore explored the validity of the environmental capacity, historical climatic stability and diversification rates hypotheses on Chinese lizard richness.LocationMainland China.TaxonSquamata: Sauria.MethodsWe mapped the distribution ranges of all 237 lizards in mainland China using a combination of different datasets. We used current environmental conditions (ambient energy, environmental productivity, and habitat heterogeneity), historical climate stability indices (long term: since ~3.3 Ma and short term: since the last glacial maximum) and mean tip diversification rates, to test whether current environmental conditions, historical climate change and diversification rates drive contemporary richness patterns of lizards in China. We applied piecewise structural equation models (pSEM) to jointly evaluate our hypotheses, considering direct and indirect effects.ResultsChinese lizards showed strong latitudinal diversity gradients. We found consistent support for contemporary climatic and environmental factors relationships with richness. Richness was also positively correlated with short‐term climatic stability, but less so with long‐term stability. Diversification rates were seldom found to be positively correlated with lizard richness.Main ConclusionsOur results support the environmental capacity and historical climate hypotheses, which link high richness to highly productive warm and stable regions (and low richness to cold and unstable regions). We conclude that post‐speciation dispersal and short‐term climatic oscillations quickly swamp the long‐term signal of diversification rates and climatic fluctuations, creating strong current climate–richness associations.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%