The DOI matches its Crossref record; 110 of the 110 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Species Richness at Continental Scales Is Dominated by Ecological Limits
Open accessAbstract
Explaining variation in species richness among provinces and other large geographic regions remains one of the most challenging problems at the intersection of ecology and evolution. Here we argue that empirical evidence supports a model whereby ecological factors associated with resource availability regulate species richness at continental scales. Any large-scale predictive model for biological diversity must explain three robust patterns in the natural world. First, species richness for evolutionary biotas is highly correlated with resource-associated surrogate variables, including area, temperature, and productivity. Second, species richness across epochal timescales is largely stationary in time. Third, the dynamics of diversity exhibit clear and predictable responses to mass extinctions, key innovations, and other perturbations. Collectively, these patterns are readily explained by a model in which species richness is regulated by diversity-dependent feedback mechanisms. We argue that many purported tests of the ecological limits hypothesis, including branching patterns in molecular phylogenies, are inherently weak and distract from these three core patterns. We have much to learn about the complex hierarchy of processes by which local ecological interactions lead to diversity dependence at the continental scale, but the empirical evidence overwhelmingly suggests that they do.
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Cites
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Cited by
Knoll, A. H., & Nowak, M. A. (2017) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.1603076 · Cited by 277
The spatial structure of Phanerozoic marine animal diversity
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Patterns and Processes of Genomic Evolution Inferred From the Ten Smallest Vertebrate Genomes
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Metadata
- Authors
- Rabosky, D. L., & Hurlbert, A. H.
- Venue
- The American Naturalist
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2015-05
- Volume
- 185
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 572-583
- ISSN
- 0003-0147 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5323
- OpenAlex
- W2065869725
- Cited by
- 310
- References
- 110
- FWCI
- 35.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
