Altitude-mediated soil properties, not geography or climatic distance, explain the distribution of a tropical endemic herb.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the ecological processes that govern species' range margins is a fundamental question in ecology with practical implications in conservation biology. The center-periphery hypothesis predicts that organisms have higher abundance at the center of their geographic range. However, most tests of this hypothesis often used raster data, assuming that climatic conditions are consistent across one square km. This assumption is not always justified, particularly for mountainous species for which climatic conditions can vary widely across a small spatial scale. Previous studies rarely evenly sample occurrence data across the species' distribution. In this study, we sampled an endemic perennial herb, Thunbergia atacorensis (Acanthanceae), throughout its range in West Africa using

SUBMITTER: Moutouama JK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8826065 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature