Global variation in diversification rate and species richness are unlinked in plants
Species richness varies immensely around the world. Variation in the rate of diversification (speciation minus extinction) is often hypothesized to explain this pattern, while alternative explanations invoke time or ecological carrying capacities as drivers. Focusing on seed plants, the world’s most...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:9271200 2023-05-15T13:52:49+02:00 Global variation in diversification rate and species richness are unlinked in plants Tietje, Melanie Antonelli, Alexandre Baker, William J. Govaerts, Rafaël Smith, Stephen A. Eiserhardt, Wolf L. 2022-06-29 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9271200/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35767644 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120662119 en eng National Academy of Sciences http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9271200/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35767644 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120662119 Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) . CC-BY-NC-ND Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences Text 2022 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120662119 2022-07-31T01:05:26Z Species richness varies immensely around the world. Variation in the rate of diversification (speciation minus extinction) is often hypothesized to explain this pattern, while alternative explanations invoke time or ecological carrying capacities as drivers. Focusing on seed plants, the world’s most important engineers of terrestrial ecosystems, we investigated the role of diversification rate as a link between the environment and global species richness patterns. Applying structural equation modeling to a comprehensive distribution dataset and phylogenetic tree covering all circa 332,000 seed plant species and 99.9% of the world’s terrestrial surface (excluding Antarctica), we test five broad hypotheses postulating that diversification serves as a mechanistic link between species richness and climate, climatic stability, seasonality, environmental heterogeneity, or the distribution of biomes. Our results show that the global patterns of species richness and diversification rate are entirely independent. Diversification rates were not highest in warm and wet climates, running counter to the Metabolic Theory of Ecology, one of the dominant explanations for global gradients in species richness. Instead, diversification rates were highest in edaphically diverse, dry areas that have experienced climate change during the Neogene. Meanwhile, we confirmed climate and environmental heterogeneity as the main drivers of species richness, but these effects did not involve diversification rates as a mechanistic link, calling for alternative explanations. We conclude that high species richness is likely driven by the antiquity of wet tropical areas (supporting the “tropical conservatism hypothesis”) or the high ecological carrying capacity of warm, wet, and/or environmentally heterogeneous environments. Text Antarc* Antarctica PubMed Central (PMC) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119 27 |
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Biological Sciences |
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Biological Sciences Tietje, Melanie Antonelli, Alexandre Baker, William J. Govaerts, Rafaël Smith, Stephen A. Eiserhardt, Wolf L. Global variation in diversification rate and species richness are unlinked in plants |
topic_facet |
Biological Sciences |
description |
Species richness varies immensely around the world. Variation in the rate of diversification (speciation minus extinction) is often hypothesized to explain this pattern, while alternative explanations invoke time or ecological carrying capacities as drivers. Focusing on seed plants, the world’s most important engineers of terrestrial ecosystems, we investigated the role of diversification rate as a link between the environment and global species richness patterns. Applying structural equation modeling to a comprehensive distribution dataset and phylogenetic tree covering all circa 332,000 seed plant species and 99.9% of the world’s terrestrial surface (excluding Antarctica), we test five broad hypotheses postulating that diversification serves as a mechanistic link between species richness and climate, climatic stability, seasonality, environmental heterogeneity, or the distribution of biomes. Our results show that the global patterns of species richness and diversification rate are entirely independent. Diversification rates were not highest in warm and wet climates, running counter to the Metabolic Theory of Ecology, one of the dominant explanations for global gradients in species richness. Instead, diversification rates were highest in edaphically diverse, dry areas that have experienced climate change during the Neogene. Meanwhile, we confirmed climate and environmental heterogeneity as the main drivers of species richness, but these effects did not involve diversification rates as a mechanistic link, calling for alternative explanations. We conclude that high species richness is likely driven by the antiquity of wet tropical areas (supporting the “tropical conservatism hypothesis”) or the high ecological carrying capacity of warm, wet, and/or environmentally heterogeneous environments. |
format |
Text |
author |
Tietje, Melanie Antonelli, Alexandre Baker, William J. Govaerts, Rafaël Smith, Stephen A. Eiserhardt, Wolf L. |
author_facet |
Tietje, Melanie Antonelli, Alexandre Baker, William J. Govaerts, Rafaël Smith, Stephen A. Eiserhardt, Wolf L. |
author_sort |
Tietje, Melanie |
title |
Global variation in diversification rate and species richness are unlinked in plants |
title_short |
Global variation in diversification rate and species richness are unlinked in plants |
title_full |
Global variation in diversification rate and species richness are unlinked in plants |
title_fullStr |
Global variation in diversification rate and species richness are unlinked in plants |
title_full_unstemmed |
Global variation in diversification rate and species richness are unlinked in plants |
title_sort |
global variation in diversification rate and species richness are unlinked in plants |
publisher |
National Academy of Sciences |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9271200/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35767644 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120662119 |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctica |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctica |
op_source |
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9271200/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35767644 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120662119 |
op_rights |
Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) . |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY-NC-ND |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2120662119 |
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |
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119 |
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27 |
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1766257573914214400 |