Biogeographic, climatic and spatial drivers differentially affect α-, β- and γ-diversities on oceanic archipelagos.

ABSTRACT: Island biogeographic studies traditionally treat single islands as units of analysis. This ignores the fact that most islands are spatially nested within archipelagos. Here, we took a fundamentally different approach and focused on entire archipelagos using species richness of vascular plants on 23 archipelagos worldwide and their 174 constituent islands. We assessed differential effects of biogeographic factors (area, isolation, age, elevation), current and past climate (temperature, precipitation, seasonality, climate change velocity) and intra-archipelagic spatial structure (archipelago area, number of islands, area range, connectivity, environmental volume, inter-island distance) on plant diversity. Species diversity of each archipelago (γ) was additively partitioned into α, β, nestedn

SUBMITTER: Cabral JS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4043083 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature