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The causes of variation in animal species richness at large spatial scales are intensively debated. Here, we examine whether the diversity of food plants, contemporary climate and energy, or habitat heterogeneity determine species richness patterns of avian frugivores across sub-Saharan Africa. Path models indicate that species richness of Ficus (their fruits being one of the major food resources for frugivores in the tropics) has the strongest direct effect on richness of avian frugivores, whereas the influences of variables related to water–energy and habitat heterogeneity are mainly indirect. The importance of Ficus richness for richness of avian frugivores diminishes with decreasing specialization of birds on fruit eating, but is retained when accounting for spatial autocorrelation. We suggest that a positive relationship between food plant and frugivore species richness could result from niche assembly mechanisms (e.g. coevolutionary adaptations to fruit size, fruit colour or vertical stratification of fruit presentation) or, alternatively, from stochastic speciation–extinction processes. In any case, the close relationship between species richness of Ficus and avian frugivores suggests that figs are keystone resources for animal consumers, even at continental scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The causes of global variation in species richness have been debated for nearly two centuries with no clear resolution in sight. Competing hypotheses have typically been evaluated with correlative models that do not explicitly incorporate the mechanisms responsible for biotic diversity gradients. Here, we employ a fundamentally different approach that uses spatially explicit Monte Carlo models of the placement of cohesive geographical ranges in an environmentally heterogeneous landscape. These models predict species richness of endemic South American birds (2248 species) measured at a continental scale. We demonstrate that the principal single-factor and composite (species-energy, water-energy and temperature-kinetics) models proposed thus far fail to predict (r2⩽0.05) the richness of species with small to moderately large geographical ranges (first three range-size quartiles). These species constitute the bulk of the avifauna and are primary targets for conservation. Climate-driven models performed reasonably well only for species with the largest geographical ranges (fourth quartile) when range cohesion was enforced. Our analyses suggest that present models inadequately explain the extraordinary diversity of avian species in the montane tropics, the most species-rich region on Earth. Our findings imply that correlative climatic models substantially underestimate the importance of historical factors and small-scale niche-driven assembly processes in shaping contemporary species-richness patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The higher-taxon approach may provide a pragmatic surrogate for the rapid identification of priority areas for conservation. To date, no continent-wide study has examined the use of higher-taxon data to identify complementarity-based networks of priority areas, nor has the influence of spatial grain size been assessed. We used data obtained from 939 sub-Saharan mammals to analyse the performance of higher-taxon data for continental priority-setting and to assess the influence of spatial grain sizes in terms of the size of selection units (1° × 1°, 2° × 2° and 4° × 4° latitudinal–longitudinal quadrates). Independent of spatial grain size, the selection of priority areas based on genus data is more effective than the random selection of these areas, while the selection of priority areas based on family data is less effective than random selection. Compared to selection based on species data, genus-based priority areas represent between 5–14% fewer species, but represent even fewer of the threatened species (6–31%) and range-restricted species (7–42%) that are normally considered most valuable for conservation. While genus-based priority areas for the 4° grain size represent species almost as effectively as species-based priority areas, genus-based areas perform considerably less effectively than species-based areas for the 1° and 2° grain size. Thus, our results favour the higher-taxon approach for continental priority-setting only when large grain sizes (≥ 4°) are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The small size of the billions of migrating songbirds commuting between temperate breeding sites and the tropics has long prevented the study of the largest part of their annual cycle outside the breeding grounds. Using light-level loggers (geolocators), we recorded the entire annual migratory cycle of the red-backed shrike Lanius collurio, a trans-equatorial Eurasian-African passerine migrant. We tested differences between autumn and spring migration for nine individuals. Duration of migration between breeding and winter sites was significantly longer in autumn (average 96 days) when compared with spring (63 days). This difference was explained by much longer staging periods during autumn (71 days) than spring (9 days). Between staging periods, the birds travelled faster during autumn (356 km d–1) than during spring (233 km d–1). All birds made a protracted stop (53 days) in Sahelian sub-Sahara on southbound migration. The birds performed a distinct loop migration (22 000 km) where spring distance, including a detour across the Arabian Peninsula, exceeded the autumn distance by 22 per cent. Geographical scatter between routes was particularly narrow in spring, with navigational convergence towards the crossing point from Africa to the Arabian Peninsula. Temporal variation between individuals was relatively constant, while different individuals tended to be consistently early or late at different departure/arrival occasions during the annual cycle. These results demonstrate the existence of fundamentally different spatio-temporal migration strategies used by the birds during autumn and spring migration, and that songbirds may rely on distinct staging areas for completion of their annual cycle, suggesting more sophisticated endogenous control mechanisms than merely clock-and-compass guidance among terrestrial solitary migrants. After a century with metal-ringing, year-round tracking of long-distance migratory songbirds promises further insights into bird migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a long tradition in ecology of evaluating the relative contribution of the regional species pool and local interactions on the structure of local communities. Similarly, a growing number of studies assess the phylogenetic structure of communities, relative to that in the regional species pool, to examine the interplay between broad-scale evolutionary and fine-scale ecological processes. Finally, a renewed interest in the influence of species source pools on communities has shown that the definition of the source pool influences interpretations of patterns of community structure. We use a continent-wide dataset of local ant communities and implement ecologically explicit source pool definitions to examine the relative importance of regional species pools and local interactions for shaping community structure. Then we assess which factors underlie systematic variation in the structure of communities along climatic gradients. We find that the average phylogenetic relatedness of species in ant communities decreases from tropical to temperate regions, but the strength of this relationship depends on the level of ecological realism in the definition of source pools. We conclude that the evolution of climatic niches influences the phylogenetic structure of regional source pools and that the influence of regional source pools on local community structure is strong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many biodiversity hotspots are located in montane regions, especially in the tropics. A possible explanation for this pattern is that the narrow thermal tolerances of tropical species and greater climatic stratification of tropical mountains create more opportunities for climate-associated parapatric or allopatric speciation in the tropics relative to the temperate zone. However, it is unclear whether a general relationship exists among latitude, climatic zonation and the ecology of speciation. Recent taxon-specific studies obtained different results regarding the role of climate in speciation in tropical versus temperate areas. Here, we quantify overlap in the climatic distributions of 93 pairs of sister species of mammals, birds, amphibians and reptiles restricted to either the New World tropics or to the Northern temperate zone. We show that elevational ranges of tropical- and temperate-zone species do not differ from one another, yet the temperature range experienced by species in the temperate zone is greater than for those in the tropics. Moreover, tropical sister species tend to exhibit greater similarity in their climatic distributions than temperate sister species. This pattern suggests that evolutionary conservatism in the thermal niches of tropical taxa, coupled with the greater thermal zonation of tropical mountains, may result in increased opportunities for allopatric isolation, speciation and the accumulation of species in tropical montane regions. Our study exemplifies the power of combining phylogenetic and spatial datasets of global climatic variation to explore evolutionary (rather than purely ecological) explanations for the high biodiversity of tropical montane regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]