Publication
Coherence of Terrestrial Vertebrate Species Richness with External Drivers Across Scales and Taxonomic Groups
Publisher:
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
Date:
23-01-2022
DOI:
10.1101/2022.01.21.477239
Abstract: Understanding connections between environment and bio ersity is crucial for conservation, identifying causes of ecosystem stress, and predicting population responses to changing environments. Explaining bio ersity requires an understanding of how species richness and environment co-vary across scales. Here, we identify scales and locations at which bio ersity is generated and correlates with environment. Full latitudinal range per continent. Present-day. Terrestrial vertebrates: all mammals, carnivorans, bats, songbirds, humming-birds, hibians. We describe the use of wavelet power spectra, cross-power and coherence for identifying scale-dependent trends across Earth’s surface. Spectra reveal scale- and location-dependent coherence between species richness and topography ( E ), mean annual precipitation ( Pn ), temperature ( Tm ) and annual temperature range (∆ T ). 97% of species richness of taxa studied is generated at large scales, i.e. wavelengths 10 3 km, with 30–69% generated at scales 10 4 km. At these scales, richness tends to be highly coherent and anti-correlated with E and ∆ T , and positively correlated with Pn and Tm . Coherence between carnivoran richness and ∆ T is low across scales, implying insensitivity to seasonal temperature variations. Conversely, hibian richness is strongly anti-correlated with ∆ T at large scales. At scales 10 3 km, examined taxa, except carnivorans, show highest richness within the tropics. Terrestrial plateaux exhibit high coherence between carnivorans and E at scales ∼ 10 3 km, consistent with contribution of large-scale tectonic processes to bio ersity. Results are similar across different continents and for global latitudinal averages. Spectral admittance permits derivation of rules-of-thumb relating long-wavelength environmental and species richness trends. Sensitivities of mammal, bird and hibian populations to environment are highly scale-dependent. At large scales, carnivoran richness is largely independent of temperature and precipitation, whereas hibian richness correlates strongly with precipitation and temperature, and anti-correlates with temperature range. These results pave the way for spectral-based calibration of models that predict bio ersity response to climate change scenarios.