Mutualisms weaken the latitudinal diversity gradient among oceanic islands.

Autor: Delavaux CS; Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Zurich, Switzerland. Camille.delavaux@usys.ethz.ch.; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA. Camille.delavaux@usys.ethz.ch., Crowther TW; Institute of Integrative Biology, ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Zurich, Switzerland., Bever JD; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA.; Kansas Biological Survey, The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA., Weigelt P; Department of Biodiversity, Macroecology and Biogeography, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.; Centre of Biodiversity and Sustainable Land Use, University of Göttingen, Göttingen, Germany.; Campus Institute Data Science, Göttingen, Germany., Gora EM; Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Panamá City, Panamá.; Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, Millbrook, NY, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Nature [Nature] 2024 Mar; Vol. 627 (8003), pp. 335-339. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Feb 28.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07110-y
Abstrakt: The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) dominates global patterns of diversity 1,2 , but the factors that underlie the LDG remain elusive. Here we use a unique global dataset 3 to show that vascular plants on oceanic islands exhibit a weakened LDG and explore potential mechanisms for this effect. Our results show that traditional physical drivers of island biogeography 4 -namely area and isolation-contribute to the difference between island and mainland diversity at a given latitude (that is, the island species deficit), as smaller and more distant islands experience reduced colonization. However, plant species with mutualists are underrepresented on islands, and we find that this plant mutualism filter explains more variation in the island species deficit than abiotic factors. In particular, plant species that require animal pollinators or microbial mutualists such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi contribute disproportionately to the island species deficit near the Equator, with contributions decreasing with distance from the Equator. Plant mutualist filters on species richness are particularly strong at low absolute latitudes where mainland richness is highest, weakening the LDG of oceanic islands. These results provide empirical evidence that mutualisms, habitat heterogeneity and dispersal are key to the maintenance of high tropical plant diversity and mediate the biogeographic patterns of plant diversity on Earth.
(© 2024. The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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