Premium
Global comparisons of beta diversity among mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians across spatial scales and taxonomic ranks
Author(s) -
QIAN Hong
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of systematics and evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.249
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1759-6831
pISSN - 1674-4918
DOI - 10.1111/j.1759-6831.2009.00043.x
Subject(s) - taxon , beta diversity , biology , ecology , alpha diversity , taxonomic rank , genus , ectotherm , species diversity , gamma diversity , zoology , biodiversity
Abstract Beta diversity is the change in species composition among areas in a geographic region. The proportion of species shared between two areas often decreases when the distance separating them increases, leading to an increase in beta diversity. This study compares beta diversity among four classes of terrestrial vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians) at both regional (biogeographic realm) and global extents, using the same sets of faunal sample units for all four groups in each comparison. Beta diversity is lower for the two endothermic taxa (birds and mammals) than for the two ectothermic taxa (reptiles and amphibians) in all six biogeographic realms examined. When the four taxa in the six biogeographic realms are combined, beta diversity at the species rank is higher than that of the genus rank by a factor of 1.24, and is higher than that of the family rank by a factor of 1.85. The ratio of beta diversity at the genus rank to that at the family rank is 1.50. Beta diversity is slightly higher for ecoregions of 5000–99,999 km 2 than for ecoregions of 100,000–5,000,000 km 2 .