Biodiversity cradles and museums segregating within hotspots of endemism.

ABSTRACT: The immense concentrations of vertebrate species in tropical mountains remain a prominent but unexplained pattern in biogeography. A long-standing hypothesis suggests that montane biodiversity hotspots result from endemic species aggregating within ecologically stable localities. Here, the persistence of ancient lineages coincides with frequent speciation events, making such areas both 'cradles' (where new species arise) and 'museums' (where old species survive). Although this hypothesis refers to processes operating at the scale of valleys, it remains supported primarily by patterns generated from coarse-scale distribution data. Using high-resolution occurrence and phylogenetic data on Andean hummingbirds, we find that old and young endemic species are not spatially aggregated. The young

SUBMITTER: Sonne J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9382217 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature