Area, isolation and climate explain the diversity of mammals on islands worldwide

Insular biodiversity is expected to be regulated differently than continental biota, but their determinants remain to be quantified at a global scale. We evaluated the importance of physical, environmental and historical factors on mammal richness and endemism across 5592 islands worldwide. We fitted generalized linear and mixed models to accommodate variation among biogeographic realms and performed analyses separately for bats and non-volants. Richness on islands ranged from one to 234 species, with up to 177 single island endemics. Diversity patterns were most consistently influenced by the islands’ physical characteristics. Area positively affected mammal diversity, in particular the number of non-volant endemics. Island isolation, both current and past, was associated with lower richness but greater endemism. Flight capacity modified the relative importance of past versus current isolation, with bats responding more strongly to current and non-volant mammals to past isolation. Biodiversity relationships with environmental factors were idiosyncratic, with a tendency for greater effects sizes with endemism than richness. The historical climatic change was positively associated with endemism. In line with theory, we found that area and isolation were among the strongest drivers of mammalian biodiversity. Our results support the importance of past conditions on current patterns, particularly of non-volant species.

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The Relative Importance of Environmental Factors for Bank Profitability in Developed and Emerging Economies

SSRN Electronic Journal ◽

10.2139/ssrn.1595746 ◽

2010 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Olga Uzhegova

Keyword(s):

Environmental Factors ◽

Emerging Economies ◽

Relative Importance ◽

Bank Profitability

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Trends in the evolution of ecology: “Spain is different”

Web Ecology ◽

10.5194/we-4-14-2003 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 4 (1) ◽

pp. 14-21 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

A. Cordero Rivera

Keyword(s):

Evolutionary Ecology ◽

Scientific Discipline ◽

Relative Importance ◽

Temporal Development ◽

Physical Systems ◽

Historical Factors ◽

The World ◽

University Department ◽

Evolutionary Concepts ◽

Special Case

Abstract. During the last fifty years ecology has matured as a scientific discipline. In this paper I analyse the temporal development of the paradigm based on physical systems (the ecosystem paradigm), and the evolutionary ecology paradigm. I first analyse the contents of 61 textbooks to calculate the relative importance of ecosystem and evolutionary ecology in the training of new generations of ecologists. Results indicate that the evolutionary approach is becoming more important since 1980, and now most textbooks dedicate 10–20% of their pages to evolutionary concepts. In a second analysis I searched the names of ecology departments in universities around the world, and found out conspicuous differences between USA, where 43% of addresses associate ecology and evolution or behaviour on the same department, and Europe, where only 10% of ecology departments also include a reference to evolution or behaviour in their name. In both analyses Spain seems to follow only the ecosystem paradigm, because Spanish textbooks dedicate almost no pages to evolutionary concepts, and there is not a single university department that includes ecology and evolution. A further bibliometric study confirmed that Spanish ecologists prefer to publish their research in general ecology journals, and are under-represented in evolutionary ecology journals. I discuss the importance of historical factors on the development of paradigms of ecology, and the special case of Spain, likely due to the influence of pioneers working in oceanography, limnology and geography.

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City Children’s Nature Knowledge and Contact: It Is Not Just About Biodiversity Provision

Environment and Behavior ◽

10.1177/0013916517732108 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 50 (10) ◽

pp. 1145-1171 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Claire Freeman ◽

Aviva Stein ◽

Kathryn Hand ◽

Yolanda van Heezik

Keyword(s):

New Zealand ◽

Environmental Factors ◽

Ethnic Group ◽

Social Factors ◽

Green Spaces ◽

Social Connections ◽

Relative Importance ◽

Linear Modeling ◽

Generalized Linear Modeling ◽

Nature Contact

Much attention has been directed at the perceived decline in city children’s contact with nature. We used a child-centric approach to assess neighborhood nature knowledge in 187 children aged 9 to 11 years, from different socioeconomic and ethnic groups in three New Zealand cities. We evaluated the relative importance of social (independence, gender, social connections, deprivation, age) and environmental factors (biodiversity) in explaining variation in knowledge at a scale relevant to each child’s independent movements. Our biodiversity evaluation reflected the natural dimensions of the habitats where children interacted with nature. Generalized linear modeling identified ethnicity as having the strongest association with nature knowledge. Within each ethnic group, social factors were most important (independence, social connections, deprivation) except for Pākehā/NZ European children, where local biodiversity was most important. Enhancing biodiversity values of private green spaces (yards) would be effective in facilitating opportunities to experience nature, which is fundamental to supporting nature contact.

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Detected climatic change in global distribution of tropical cyclones

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ◽

10.1073/pnas.1922500117 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 117 (20) ◽

pp. 10706-10714 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Hiroyuki Murakami ◽

Thomas L. Delworth ◽

William F. Cooke ◽

Ming Zhao ◽

Baoqiang Xiang ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Tropical Cyclone ◽

Spatial Pattern ◽

Climatic Change ◽

Tropical Cyclones ◽

Volcanic Eruptions ◽

Internal Variability ◽

Global Scale ◽

Central Pacific ◽

The North ◽

Limited Length

Owing to the limited length of observed tropical cyclone data and the effects of multidecadal internal variability, it has been a challenge to detect trends in tropical cyclone activity on a global scale. However, there is a distinct spatial pattern of the trends in tropical cyclone frequency of occurrence on a global scale since 1980, with substantial decreases in the southern Indian Ocean and western North Pacific and increases in the North Atlantic and central Pacific. Here, using a suite of high-resolution dynamical model experiments, we show that the observed spatial pattern of trends is very unlikely to be explained entirely by underlying multidecadal internal variability; rather, external forcing such as greenhouse gases, aerosols, and volcanic eruptions likely played an important role. This study demonstrates that a climatic change in terms of the global spatial distribution of tropical cyclones has already emerged in observations and may in part be attributable to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

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Structuring of Dragonfly Communities (Insecta: Odonata) in Eastern Amazon: Effects of Environmental and Spatial Factors in Preserved and Altered Streams

Insects ◽

10.3390/insects10100322 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 10 (10) ◽

pp. 322 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Oliveira-Junior ◽

Juen

Keyword(s):

Environmental Factors ◽

Biotic Interactions ◽

Environmental Variation ◽

Relative Importance ◽

Spatial Variables ◽

Spatial Factors ◽

The Past ◽

Analytical Perspective ◽

Physical Features ◽

Natural Communities

The evaluation of the effects of environmental factors on natural communities has been one of the principal approaches in ecology; although, over the past decade, increasing importance has been given to spatial factors. In this context, we evaluated the relative importance of environmental and spatial factors for the structuring of the local odonate communities in preserved and altered streams. Adult Odonata were sampled in 98 streams in eastern Amazonia, Brazil. The physical features of each stream were evaluated and spatial variables were generated. Only environmental factors accounted for the variation in the Odonata community. The same pattern was observed in the suborder Zygoptera. For Anisoptera, environmental factors alone affect the variation in the community, considering all the environments together, and the altered areas on their own. As the two Odonata suborders presented distinct responses to environmental factors, this partitioning may contribute to an improvement in the precision of studies in biomonitoring. We thus suggest that studies would have a greater explanatory potential if additional variables are included, related to biotic interactions (e.g., competition). This will require further investigation on a finer scale of environmental variation to determine how the Odonata fauna of Amazonian streams behaves under this analytical perspective.

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