Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Speciation and patterns of biodiversity
- 2 On the arbitrary identification of real species
- 3 The evolutionary nature of diversification in sexuals and asexuals
- 4 The poverty of the protists
- 5 Theory, community assembly, diversity and evolution in the microbial world
- 6 Limits to adaptation and patterns of biodiversity
- 7 Dynamic patterns of adaptive radiation: evolution of mating preferences
- 8 Niche dimensionality and ecological speciation
- 9 Progressive levels of trait divergence along a ‘speciation transect’ in the Lake Victoria cichlid fish Pundamilia
- 10 Rapid speciation, hybridization and adaptive radiation in the Heliconius melpomene group
- 11 Investigating ecological speciation
- 12 Biotic interactions and speciation in the tropics
- 13 Ecological influences on the temporal pattern of speciation
- 14 Speciation, extinction and diversity
- 15 Temporal patterns in diversification rates
- 16 Speciation and extinction in the fossil record of North American mammals
- Index
- Plate section
- References
12 - Biotic interactions and speciation in the tropics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Speciation and patterns of biodiversity
- 2 On the arbitrary identification of real species
- 3 The evolutionary nature of diversification in sexuals and asexuals
- 4 The poverty of the protists
- 5 Theory, community assembly, diversity and evolution in the microbial world
- 6 Limits to adaptation and patterns of biodiversity
- 7 Dynamic patterns of adaptive radiation: evolution of mating preferences
- 8 Niche dimensionality and ecological speciation
- 9 Progressive levels of trait divergence along a ‘speciation transect’ in the Lake Victoria cichlid fish Pundamilia
- 10 Rapid speciation, hybridization and adaptive radiation in the Heliconius melpomene group
- 11 Investigating ecological speciation
- 12 Biotic interactions and speciation in the tropics
- 13 Ecological influences on the temporal pattern of speciation
- 14 Speciation, extinction and diversity
- 15 Temporal patterns in diversification rates
- 16 Speciation and extinction in the fossil record of North American mammals
- Index
- Plate section
- References
Summary
Tropical environments provide more evolutionary challenges than do the environments of temperate and cold lands. Furthermore, the challenges of the latter arise largely from physical agencies, to which organisms respond by relatively simply physiological modifications …. The challenges of tropical environments stem chiefly from the intricate mutual relationships among inhabitants.
Dobzhansky (1950, p. 221)In virtually all groups of organisms, species richness increases from polar to equatorial regions (Wallace 1878; Dobzhansky 1950; Rosenzweig 1995; Brown & Lomolino 1998; Hillebrand 2004). This pattern is observed for extinct and living species, plants and animals, and in terrestrial and marine environments (Table 15.1; Brown & Lomolino 1998). The contrast in species richness between temperate and tropical communities is often substantial. For example, the breeding bird diversity in North America varies from <100 species in high latitude areas of the boreal zone, to 300 species in Central Mexico and to 600 species in equatorial regions of the New World tropics (MacArthur 1969; Hawkins et al. 2006). For trees, the latitudinal differences are astonishing. There are 620 tree species in all of North America (Currie & Paquin 1987), as compared to 1017 species on just 15 hectares in Yasuni National Park, Ecuador (Pitman et al. 2002), and an estimated 22,500 species in the New World tropics (Fine & Ree 2006).
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- Information
- Speciation and Patterns of Diversity , pp. 219 - 239Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
References
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