Disentangling vegetation diversity from climate–energy and habitat heterogeneity for explaining animal geographic patterns
Date
2016
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Wiley Open Access
Abstract
Broad-scale animal diversity patterns have been traditionally explained by
hypotheses focused on climate–energy and habitat heterogeneity, without con-
sidering the direct influence of vegetation structure and composition. However,
integrating these factors when considering plant–animal correlates still poses a
major challenge because plant communities are controlled by abiotic factors
that may, at the same time, influence animal distributions. By testing whether
the number and variation of plant community types in Europe explain coun-
try-level diversity in six animal groups, we propose a conceptual framework in
which vegetation diversity represents a bridge between abiotic factors and ani-
mal diversity. We show that vegetation diversity explains variation in animal
richness not accounted for by altitudinal range or potential evapotranspiration,
being the best predictor for butterflies, beetles, and amphibians. Moreover, the
dissimilarity of plant community types explains the highest proportion of varia-
tion in animal assemblages across the studied regions, an effect that outper-
forms the effect of climate and their shared contribution with pure spatial
variation. Our results at the country level suggest that vegetation diversity, as
estimated from broad-scale classifications of plant communities, may contribute
to our understanding of animal richness and may be disentangled, at least to a
degree, from climate–energy and abiotic habitat heterogeneity.
Description
CITATION: Jimenez-Alfaro, B., et al. 2006. Disentangling vegetation diversity from climate–energy and habitat heterogeneity for explaining animal geographic patterns. Ecology and Evolution, 6(5):1515-1526,
doi:10.1002/ece3.197.
The original publication is available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com
The original publication is available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Keywords
Animal diversity, Urban ecology (Biology), Biodiversity -- Climatic factors, Biodiversity -- Effect of climate on, Biodiversity -- Effect of climatic changes on, Species diversity, Plant communities, Vegetation, Agricultural productivity
Citation
Jimenez-Alfaro, B., et al. 2006. Disentangling vegetation diversity from climate–energy and habitat heterogeneity for explaining animal geographic patterns. Ecology and Evolution, 6(5):1515-1526,
doi:10.1002/ece3.197