Abstract

Many models to explain the differences in the flora and fauna of tropical and temperate regions assume that whole clades are restricted to the tropics. We develop methods to assess the extent to which biotas are geographically discrete, and find that transition zones between regions occupied by tropical-associated or temperate-associated biotas are often narrow, suggesting a role for freezing temperatures in partitioning global biotas. Across the steepest tropical-temperate gradient in the world, that of the Himalaya, bird communities below and above the freezing line are largely populated by different tropical and temperate biotas with links to India and Southeast Asia, or to China respectively. The importance of the freezing line is retained when clades rather than species are considered, reflecting confinement of different clades to one or another climate zone. The reality of the sharp tropical-temperate boundary adds credence to the argument that exceptional species richness in the tropics reflects species accumulation over time, with limited transgressions of species and clades into the temperate.

Details

Title
Regional influences on community structure across the tropical-temperate divide
Author
White, Alexander E 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Dey, Kushal K 2 ; Mohan, Dhananjai 3 ; Stephens, Matthew 4   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Price, Trevor D 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; Data Science Lab, Office of the Chief Information Officer, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA; National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA 
 Department of Statistics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; Department of Epidemiology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA 
 Wildlife Institute of India, Chandrabani, Dehradun, India 
 Department of Statistics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; Department of Human Genetics, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA 
 Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA 
Pages
1-8
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Jun 2019
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20411723
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2240137675
Copyright
© 2019. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.