Asking the Wrong Question in Explaining Tropical Diversity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick G. Cannon ◽  
David P. Edwards ◽  
Robert P. Freckleton
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Diversity

scholarly journals Diversity of Curculionoidea in Humid Rain Forest Canopies of Borneo: A Taxonomic Blank Spot

Diversity ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Sprick ◽  
Andreas Floren
Keyword(s):  
Species Diversity ◽  
Rain Forest ◽  
Taxonomic Composition ◽  
Forest Canopies ◽  
Tropical Diversity ◽  
Ecological Importance ◽  
Blank Spot

From 1992 to 2009, 334 trees were sampled by insecticidal knockdown on Borneo, Malaysia. Here, we describe the taxonomic composition of the 9671 specimens and 1589 species Curculionoidea collected (with additional notes on Cerambycidae). We found a largely unknown fauna with an assumed proportion of over 80% of species new to science, including all 33 Apionidae and 26 Ceutorhynchinae species. Specialists could usually identify only a few specimens leaving the remaining beetles for further investigation. The samples contain numerous genera, two tribes (Egriini, Viticiini), one subfamily (Mesoptiliinae) and one family (Belidae) new to Borneo and several genera not recorded west of the Wallace line before. These data show how little is known about canopy diversity. The lack of taxonomic knowledge implies a respective lack of autecological knowledge and is alarming. Some taxa differed conspicuously between primary and disturbed forests. In contrast to common literature, our results let us conclude that current efforts to narrow down the extent of tropical diversity and its ecological importance must consider the enormous species diversity of the canopy.

scholarly journals Past and future decline of tropical pelagic biodiversity

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (23) ◽  
pp. 12891-12896 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moriaki Yasuhara ◽  
Chih-Lin Wei ◽  
Michal Kucera ◽  
Mark J. Costello ◽  
Derek P. Tittensor ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Control ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Ocean Warming ◽  
Ice Age ◽  
Deep Time ◽  
Tropical Biodiversity ◽  
Diversity Gradient ◽  
Tropical Diversity ◽  
Distribution Shifts ◽  
The Tropics

A major research question concerning global pelagic biodiversity remains unanswered: when did the apparent tropical biodiversity depression (i.e., bimodality of latitudinal diversity gradient [LDG]) begin? The bimodal LDG may be a consequence of recent ocean warming or of deep-time evolutionary speciation and extinction processes. Using rich fossil datasets of planktonic foraminifers, we show here that a unimodal (or only weakly bimodal) diversity gradient, with a plateau in the tropics, occurred during the last ice age and has since then developed into a bimodal gradient through species distribution shifts driven by postglacial ocean warming. The bimodal LDG likely emerged before the Anthropocene and industrialization, and perhaps ∼15,000 y ago, indicating a strong environmental control of tropical diversity even before the start of anthropogenic warming. However, our model projections suggest that future anthropogenic warming further diminishes tropical pelagic diversity to a level not seen in millions of years.

scholarly journals Restoring tropical diversity: beating the time tax on species loss

2003 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-429 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Martinez-Garza ◽  
Henry F. Howe
Keyword(s):  
Species Loss ◽  
Tropical Diversity

Tropical diversity and the energetic ecology of the Red Queen

2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Field ◽  
Jens-Christian Svenning
Keyword(s):  
Red Queen ◽  
Tropical Diversity ◽  
The Red Queen

scholarly journals Loss of dominant caterpillar genera in a protected tropical forest

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle M. Salcido ◽  
Matthew L. Forister ◽  
Humberto Garcia Lopez ◽  
Lee A. Dyer
Keyword(s):  
Tropical Forest ◽  
Ecosystem Function ◽  
Biodiversity Loss ◽  
Insect Diversity ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Low Latitude ◽  
Tropical Diversity ◽  
Primary Consumers ◽  
Abundance And Diversity ◽  
Weather Anomalies

ABSTRACTReports of biodiversity loss have increasingly focused on the abundance and diversity of insects, but it is still unclear if substantive insect diversity losses are occurring in intact low-latitude forests. We collected 22 years of plant-caterpillar-parasitoid data in a protected tropical forest and found reductions in diversity and density of these insects that appear to be partly driven by a changing climate and weather anomalies. The decline in parasitism represents a reduction in an important ecosystem service: enemy control of primary consumers. The consequences of these changes are in many cases irreversible and are likely to be mirrored in nearby forests; overall declines in the region will have negative consequences for surrounding agriculture. The decline of important tropical taxa and associated ecosystem function illuminates the consequences of numerous threats to global insect diversity and provides additional impetus for research on tropical diversity.

scholarly journals Historical contingency, niche conservatism and the tendency for some taxa to be more diverse towards the poles

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ignacio Morales-Castilla ◽  
Jonathan T Davies ◽  
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez
Keyword(s):  
Strongly Correlated ◽  
Historical Contingency ◽  
Land Bridge ◽  
Cold Temperatures ◽  
Latitudinal Diversity Gradient ◽  
Diversity Gradient ◽  
Tropical Diversity ◽  
Diversity Gradients ◽  
Climate Space

Successful explanations for diversity gradients should account for both the generalized tendency towards a higher tropical diversity and its exceptions. Moreover, identifying exceptions to general trends, such as the latitudinal diversity gradient can give insight into the mechanistic explanations responsible for structuring them. The Cenozoic biotic exchange of mammals across the Bering land-bridge provides an illuminating case-study. It allows comparing the diversity of clades that participated in the exchange (colonizers), whose ancestors withstood the Beringian cold temperatures, with that of the clades that did not participate (sedentaries). We find that assemblages of colonizers are more diverse towards higher latitudes, opposing the traditional latitudinal diversity gradient which is followed by sedentaries. Despite the long passage of time since this major dispersal event, the geographic distribution of colonizers is more strongly correlated to the distributions of other colonizers inhabiting a different continent than by the distribution of sedentary species. These results highlight the importance of historical migrations and dispersal in configuring present-day diversity gradients. Importantly, we also suggest that colonizers may be particularly vulnerable to projected climate change because of the predicted decrease in climate space in the extra-tropical realm where they are currently most diverse.

scholarly journals Genome Skimming Reveals Widespread Hybridization in a Neotropical Flowering Plant Radiation

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oriane Loiseau ◽  
Talita Mota Machado ◽  
Margot Paris ◽  
Darina Koubínová ◽  
Kyle G. Dexter ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Plant Diversity ◽  
Genomic Research ◽  
Flowering Plant ◽  
Tropical Plant ◽  
Tropical Diversity ◽  
Order Of Magnitude ◽  
Adaptive Radiations ◽  
Rapid Diversification ◽  
Genome Skimming ◽  
The Tropics

The tropics hold at least an order of magnitude greater plant diversity than the temperate zone, yet the reasons for this difference are still subject to debate. Much of tropical plant diversity is in highly speciose genera and understanding the drivers of such high species richness will help solve the tropical diversity enigma. Hybridization has recently been shown to underlie many adaptive radiations, but its role in the evolution of speciose tropical plant genera has received little attention. Here, we address this topic in the hyperdiverse Bromeliaceae genus Vriesea using genome skimming data covering the three genomic compartments. We find evidence for hybridization in ca. 11% of the species in our dataset, both within the genus and between Vriesea and other genera, which is commensurate with hybridization underlying the hyperdiversity of Vriesea, and potentially other genera in Tillandsioideae. While additional genomic research will be needed to further clarify the contribution of hybridization to the rapid diversification of Vriesea, our study provides an important first data point suggesting its importance to the evolution of tropical plant diversity.

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