Common latitudinal gradients in functional richness and functional evenness across marine and terrestrial systems.

ABSTRACT: Functional diversity is an important aspect of biodiversity, but its relationship to species diversity in time and space is poorly understood. Here we compare spatial patterns of functional and taxonomic diversity across marine and terrestrial systems to identify commonalities in their respective ecological and evolutionary drivers. We placed species-level ecological traits into comparable multi-dimensional frameworks for two model systems, marine bivalves and terrestrial birds, and used global species-occurrence data to examine the distribution of functional diversity with latitude and longitude. In both systems, tropical faunas show high total functional richness (FR) but low functional evenness (FE) (i.e. the tropics contain a highly skewed distribution of species among functional group

SUBMITTER: Schumm M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6710603 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature