•Journal•ISSN: 1948-6596
Frontiers of biogeography
International Biogeography Society
About: Frontiers of biogeography is an academic journal published by International Biogeography Society. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Biology & Species richness. It has an ISSN identifier of 1948-6596. It is also open access. Over the lifetime, 350 publications have been published receiving 2978 citations.
Topics: Biology, Species richness, Climate change, Population, Biogeography
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TL;DR: This work uses BioGeoBEARS on a large sample of island and non-island clades to show that founder-event speciation is a crucial process in almost every clade, and that most published datasets reject the non-J models currently in widespread use.
Abstract: Historical biogeography has been characterized by a large diversity of methods and unresolved debates about which processes, such as dispersal or vicariance, are most important for explaining distributions. A new R package, BioGeoBEARS, implements many models in a common likelihood framework, so that standard statistical model selection procedures can be applied to let the data choose the best model. Available models include a likelihood version of DIVA (“DIVALIKE”), LAGRANGE’s DEC model, and BAYAREA, as well as “+J” versions of these models which include founder-event speciation, an important process left out of most inference methods. I use BioGeoBEARS on a large sample of island and non-island clades (including two fossil clades) to show that founder-event speciation is a crucial process in almost every clade, and that most published datasets reject the non-J models currently in widespread use. BioGeoBEARS is open-source and freely available for installation at the Comprehensive R Archive Network at http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=BioGeoBEARS. A step-by-step tutorial is available at http://phylo.wikidot.com/biogeobears.
676 citations
TL;DR: The success story of the IPCC, putting climate change on the agenda of politicians and science financing bodies worldwide, is meant to be dupli− cated by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) 2, which focuses on the global biodiversity crisis and the services we get from nature as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: editorial ISSN 1948‐6596 The Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), up and walking Introduction The success story of the IPCC , putting climate change on the agenda of politicians and science financing bodies worldwide, is meant to be dupli‐ cated by the Intergovernmental Science‐Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) 2 , which focuses on the global biodiversity crisis and the services we get from nature. After its initiation in January 2013 in Bonn, Germany, the second plenary (IPBES‐2) was held in Antalya, Turkey, between December 7 th and December 14 th . At IPBES‐2 an ambitious work programme was adopted for the years 2014–2018. Eight as‐ sessments (see Table 1 and Figure 1), three of which are intended to be finished as soon as 2015, and 2016 respectively, will be taken on in this ini‐ tial work phase, in addition to a range of other deliverables aimed at fulfilling the Platform’s other three functions: capacity building, knowl‐ edge generation and policy tools (Figure 1). The initial “thematic” assessment on “pollination and food production” is meant to pro‐ vide an ‘early win’, given that this biodiversity is‐ sue is already highly relevant and a lot of perti‐ Figure 1. Schedule for delivery of the work programme. Numbers 1–7 refer to milestones: (1) ‘preliminary’ and (2) ‘final’ principles and procedures for working with indigenous and local knowledge; (3) ‘preliminary’ and (4) ‘final’ guide on how to use scenarios and modelling in the Platform’s work; (5) ‘preliminary’ and (6) ‘final’ guide on how to use values, valuation and accounting in the Platform’s work; (7) guidance on policy support tools. Source: Decision of the second Plenary of IPBES 2 . 1 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, at http://www.ipcc.ch/ 2 http://www.ipbes.net/ frontiers of biogeography 5.4, 2013 — © 2013 the authors; journal compilation © 2013 The International Biogeography Society
102 citations
TL;DR: An overview of SADs is provided, including descriptions of the commonly used distributions, and few attempts have been made to synthesise the vast array of methods which have been employed in SAD model evaluation.
Abstract: A species abundance distribution (SAD) characterises patterns in the commonness and rarity of all species within an ecological community. As such, the SAD provides the theoretical foundation for a number of other biogeographical and macroecological patterns, such as the species– area relationship, as well as being an interesting pattern in its own right. While there has been resurgence in the study of SADs in the last decade, less focus has been placed on methodology in SAD research, and few attempts have been made to synthesise the vast array of methods which have been employed in SAD model evaluation. As such, our review has two aims. First, we provide a general overview of SADs, including descriptions of the commonly used distributions, plotting
62 citations
TL;DR: A new environmental space-based Niche Equivalence Statistic to test niche similarity between two species, which explicitly incorporates the spatial distribution of environments and their availability into statistical tests and improves accuracy of niche similarity and associated tests – consistently outperforming other tests.
Abstract: Being snapshots in time, species ranges may fall short of representing all of the geographic or environmental space that they are able to occupy. This has important implications for niche studies yet most comparative studies overlook the transient nature of species distributions and assume that they are at equilibrium. We review the methods most widely used for niche comparisons today and suggest a modified framework to describe and compare niches based on snapshot species range data. First, we introduce a new environmental space-based Niche Equivalence Statistic to test niche similarity between two species, which explicitly incorporates the spatial distribution of environments and their availability into statistical tests. We also introduce a new Background Statistic to measure the ability of this Niche Equivalence Statistic to detect differences based on the available environmental-space. These metrics enable fair comparisons between different geographies when the ranges of species are out of equilibrium. Based on distinct parameterizations of the new Equivalence and Background statistics, we then propose a Niche Divergence Test and a Niche Overlap Test, which allow assessment of whether differences between species emerge from true niche divergences. These methods are implemented in a new R package, ‘humboldt’ and applied to simulated species with pre-defined niches. The new methods improve accuracy of niche similarity and associated tests – consistently outperforming other tests. We show that the quantification of niche similarity should be performed only in environmental space, which is less sensitive than geographic space to the spatial abundance of key environmental variables. Further, our methods characterize the relationships between non-analogous and analogous climates in the species’ distributions, something not available previously. These improvements allow assessment of whether the different environmental spaces occupied by two taxa emerge from true niche evolution, as opposed to differences in life history and biological interactors, or differences in the variety and configuration of environments accessible to them.
46 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: The keystone concept has been widely applied in the ecological literature since the idea was introduced in 1969 but the terminology surrounding the concept has expanded to the extent that there is considerable confusion over what exactly a keystone species is.
Abstract: The keystone concept has been widely applied in the ecological literature since the idea was introduced in 1969. While it has been useful in framing biodiversity research and garnering support in conservation policy circles, the terminology surrounding the concept has been expanded to the extent that there is considerable confusion over what exactly a keystone species is. Several
43 citations