The DOI matches its Crossref record; 118 of the 118 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Why are there so many species in the tropics?
Open accessAbstract
Known for centuries, the geographical pattern of increasing biodiversity from the poles to the equator is one of the most pervasive features of life on Earth. A longstanding goal of biogeographers has been to understand the primary factors that generate and maintain high diversity in the tropics. Many ‘historical’ and ‘ecological’ hypotheses have been proposed and debated, but there is still little consensus. Recent discussions have centred around two main phenomena: phylogenetic niche conservatism and ecological productivity. These two factors play important roles, but accumulating theoretical and empirical studies suggest that the single most important factor is kinetics: the temperature dependence of ecological and evolutionary rates. The relatively high temperatures in the tropics generate and maintain high diversity because ‘the Red Queen runs faster when she is hot’.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The Theory of Island Biogeography
MacArthur, R. H., & Wilson, E. O. (2001) · Princeton University Press eBooks · doi:10.1515/9781400881376 · Cited by 12,632
The Theory of Island Biogeography
Kirkby, M. J., MacArthur, R. H., & Wilson, E. O. (1968) · The Geographical Journal · doi:10.2307/1796430 · Cited by 11,581
TOWARD A METABOLIC THEORY OF ECOLOGY
Brown, J. H., Gillooly, J. F., Allen, A. P., Savage, V. M., & West, G. B. (2004) · Ecology · doi:10.1890/03-9000 · Cited by 7,779
Self-citationThe Unified Neutral Theory of Biodiversity and Biogeography
Jetschke, G. (2002) · Ecology · doi:10.1890/0012-9658(2002)083[1771:tuntob]2.0.co;2 · Cited by 6,993
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
Livezey, R. L., & Darwin, C. (1953) · American Midland Naturalist · doi:10.2307/2485224 · Cited by 5,405
Herbivores and the Number of Tree Species in Tropical Forests
Janzen, D. H. (1970) · The American Naturalist · doi:10.1086/282687 · Cited by 4,774
Species diversity in space and time
(1996) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.33-2720 · Cited by 4,573
Homage to Santa Rosalia or Why Are There So Many Kinds of Animals?
Hutchinson, G. E. (1959) · The American Naturalist · doi:10.1086/282070 · Cited by 4,138
Effects of Size and Temperature on Metabolic Rate
Gillooly, J. F., Brown, J. H., West, G. B., Savage, V. M., & Charnov, E. L. (2001) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1061967 · Cited by 3,810
Self-citation
Cited by
Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production: Patterns, Trends, and Planetary Boundaries
Haberl, H., Erb, K.-H., & Krausmann, F. (2014) · Annual Review of Environment and Resources · doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-121912-094620 · Cited by 275
Toward a trophic theory of species diversity
Terborgh, J. W. (2015) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1501070112 · Cited by 253
Historic and prehistoric human-driven extinctions have reshaped global mammal diversity patterns
Faurby, S., & Svenning, J.-C. (2015) · Diversity and Distributions · doi:10.1111/ddi.12369 · Cited by 226
The palaeogeographical impact on the biodiversity of marine faunas during the Ordovician radiations
Harper, D. A. T., Cascales-Miñana, B., Kroeck, D. M., & Servais, T. (2021) · Global and Planetary Change · doi:10.1016/j.gloplacha.2021.103665 · Cited by 36
Zhuravlev, A. Y., Mitchell, E. G., Bowyer, F., Wood, R., & Penny, A. (2022) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/s41467-022-35283-5 · Cited by 24
Metadata
- Authors
- Brown, J. H.
- Venue
- Journal of Biogeography
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2013-12-16
- Volume
- 41
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 8-22
- ISSN
- 0305-0270 (ISSN-L)
- 1365-2699
- OpenAlex
- W2059284281
- Cited by
- 914
- References
- 118
- FWCI
- 24.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Why are there so many species in the tropics? https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1111/jbi.12228
- The paper
- Brown, J. H. (2014). Why are there so many species in the tropics? Journal of Biogeography. https://doi.org/10.1111/jbi.12228
Data sources
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.
