The DOI matches its Crossref record; 23 of the 23 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Latitudinal Gradient in Recent Speciation and Extinction Rates of Birds and Mammals
Abstract
Although the tropics harbor greater numbers of species than do temperate zones, it is not known whether the rates of speciation and extinction also follow a latitudinal gradient. By sampling birds and mammals, we found that the distribution of the evolutionary ages of sister species—pairs of species in which each is the other's closest relative—adheres to a latitudinal gradient. The time to divergence for sister species is shorter at high latitudes and longer in the tropics. Birth-death models fitting these data estimate that the highest recent speciation and extinction rates occur at high latitudes and decline toward the tropics. These results conflict with the prevailing view that links high tropical diversity to elevated tropical speciation rates. Instead, our findings suggest that faster turnover at high latitudes contributes to the latitudinal diversity gradient.
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
Global patterns in biodiversity
Gaston, K. J. (2000) · Nature · doi:10.1038/35012228 · Cited by 3,355
On the Generality of the Latitudinal Diversity Gradient
Hillebrand, H. (2004) · The American Naturalist · doi:10.1086/381004 · Cited by 2,085
Latitudinal Gradients in Species Diversity: A Review of Concepts
Pianka, E. R. (1966) · The American Naturalist · doi:10.1086/282398 · Cited by 1,896
Flowering Plants. Evolution above the Species Level
Cronquist, A., & Stebbins, G. L. (1975) · Taxon · doi:10.2307/1218350 · Cited by 1,396
Flowering Plants: Evolution Above the Species Level
Stebbins, G. L. (1974) · Harvard University Press eBooks · doi:10.4159/harvard.9780674864856 · Cited by 1,366
Time Dependency of Molecular Rate Estimates and Systematic Overestimation of Recent Divergence Times
Ho, S. Y. W., Phillips, M. J., Cooper, A., & Drummond, A. J. (2005) · Molecular Biology and Evolution · doi:10.1093/molbev/msi145 · Cited by 1,057
Out of the Tropics: Evolutionary Dynamics of the Latitudinal Diversity Gradient
Jablonski, D., Roy, K., & Valentine, J. W. (2006) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1130880 · Cited by 969
LATITUDINAL VARIATIONS IN ORGANIC DIVERSITY
Fischer, A. G. (1960) · Evolution · doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.1960.tb03057.x · Cited by 945
On the Generalized "Birth-and-Death" Process
Kendall, D. G. (1948) · The Annals of Mathematical Statistics · doi:10.1214/aoms/1177730285 · Cited by 852
Pleistocene phylogeographic effects on avian populations and the speciation process
Avise, J. C., & Walker, D. E. (1998) · Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.1998.0317 · Cited by 650
Cited by
Has the Earth’s sixth mass extinction already arrived?
Barnosky, A. D., Matzke, N., Tomiya, S., Wogan, G. O. U., Swartz, B., Quental, T. B., Marshall, C., McGuire, J. L., Lindsey, E. L., Maguire, K. C., et al. (2011) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature09678 · Cited by 4,400
The global diversity of birds in space and time
Jetz, W., Thomas, G. H., Joy, J. B., Hartmann, K., & Mooers, A. O. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature11631 · Cited by 3,934
A new time tree reveals Earth history’s imprint on the evolution of modern birds
Claramunt, S., & Cracraft, J. (2015) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.1501005 · Cited by 383
Wiens, J. J. (2011) · The Quarterly Review of Biology · doi:10.1086/659883 · Cited by 328
RULL, V. (2008) · Molecular Ecology · doi:10.1111/j.1365-294x.2008.03789.x · Cited by 296
Metadata
- Authors
- Weir, J. T., & Schluter, D.
- Venue
- Science
- Published
- 2007-03-16
- Volume
- 315
- Issue
- 5818
- Pages
- 1574-1576
- ISSN
- 0036-8075 (ISSN-L)
- 1095-9203
- OpenAlex
- W2065486396
- Cited by
- 632
- References
- 23
- FWCI
- 28.25
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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: The Latitudinal Gradient in Recent Speciation and Extinction Rates of Birds and Mammals. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1126/science.1135590
- The paper
- Weir, J. T., & Schluter, D. (2007). The Latitudinal Gradient in Recent Speciation and Extinction Rates of Birds and Mammals. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1135590
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.
