Global Patterns of Geographic Range Sizes A Birds Eye View 英文参考文献.docVIP

Global Patterns of Geographic Range Sizes: A Bird’s Eye View Liza Gross | DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040237 As earth’s biodiversity continues to plummet, conservation biologists are redoubling their efforts to characterize the number and geographic range of the species that still inhabit it. But knowing how many species inhabit a given area (called species richness) and the extent of their range across the landscape is just one part of their strategy. Determining the mechanisms that underlie spatial variations in species’ range size will help explain global patterns in species richness—why the tropics are biodiversity hotspots, for example—predict how global climate changes might affect biodiversity, and establish priorities for conservation. appropriate cell sizes. Species range areas were calculated by totaling all the cells containing the species. Latitudinal extent was de?ned as the difference between the northern and southern limits of the vector maps for each breeding range. Species richness was calculated by adding all the species in each cell. Their analysis shows that the majority of bird species have small geographic ranges. More than a quarter of species have ranges smaller than 86,872 square miles (equal to the area of Great Britain), with the smallest ranges found on islands, In 1921, Frank Lutz, of the American Museum of Natural History, found that range area for North American plant species decreased “steadily and markedly” as one moved from high to low latitudes. Nearly 70 years later, this north- to-south decline in range size was codi?ed as Rapoport’s rule—but not without generating considerable debate about the universality of the principle. The question has remained controversial largely because it has been explored mostly at limited scales, with studies analyzing either small taxonomic groups or restricted regions within individual biogeographic realms (regions that roughly follow the divisions of the major continents). In a new study, David