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Is diversification rate related to climatic niche width?
Author(s) -
GómezRodríguez Carola,
Baselga Andrés,
Wiens John J.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
global ecology and biogeography
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.164
H-Index - 152
eISSN - 1466-8238
pISSN - 1466-822X
DOI - 10.1111/geb.12229
Subject(s) - niche , ecological niche , ecology , diversification (marketing strategy) , biology , species richness , range (aeronautics) , clade , null model , phylogenetic tree , habitat , biochemistry , materials science , marketing , gene , business , composite material
Aim Diversification rates are critically important for understanding patterns of species richness, both among clades and among regions. However, the ecological correlates of variation in diversification rates remain poorly explored. Here, we test several hypotheses relating diversification rate and niche width across amphibian families (frogs and salamanders). Location Global. Methods We characterized climatic niches for 5784 amphibian species using databases for species distributions and climate. We estimated the niche width of each family using the range of values for climatic variables across all sampled species, and using the mean of species niche widths. We estimated diversification rates for families given their total number of described species and a time‐calibrated phylogeny. We estimated relationships between variables using phylogenetic comparative methods. Results We found a significant positive relationship between family niche width and diversification rate, but a weak relationship between mean species niche width and diversification rate, despite both niche width variables being correlated. In fact, the deviation from this relationship (i.e. residuals of family niche width versus mean species niche width) was the best predictor of diversification rate. The observed relationship between niche width and diversification was independent of clade range size and niche position (e.g. whether clades occurred in tropical or temperate climates) and significantly different from null patterns derived from random sampling effects. Main conclusions Our results identify climatic niche width, and especially the relationship between family and species‐level niche widths, as a major correlate of diversification rates among amphibian families. These results suggest that climatic niche divergence among species within clades can be important in explaining large‐scale diversity patterns, possibly even more so than a clade's geographic area or whether it is primarily temperate or tropical.