Global reef fish richness gradients emerge from divergent and scale-dependent component changes.

ABSTRACT: Biodiversity varies from place to place due to environmental and historical factors. To improve our understanding of how history and the environment influence observed patterns, we need to address the limitations of the most commonly used biodiversity metric, species richness. Here, we show that scale-dependent dissections of species richness into components of total abundance, species relative abundances and spatial aggregations of species reveal that two well-known biogeographic reef fish species richness gradients emerge from very different underlying component patterns. Latitudinal richness is underpinned by scale-independent patterns of total and relative abundances, suggesting ecological constraints scale up to determine abundances within communities. In contrast, the longitudinal gr

SUBMITTER: Blowes SA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5719164 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature