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      Large-scale processes and the Asian bias in species diversity of temperate plants.

      1 ,
      Nature
      Springer Science and Business Media LLC

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          Abstract

          An important issue in the study of biodiversity is the extent to which global patterns of species richness reflect large-scale processes and historical contingencies. Ecological interactions in local assemblages may constrain the number of species that can coexist, but differences in diversity in similar habitats within different regions (diversity anomalies) suggest that this limit is not firm. Variation in rate of species production could influence regional and perhaps local diversity independently of the ecological capacity of an area to support coexisting species, thereby creating diversity anomalies. Temperate Zone genera of plants that are disjunct between similar environments in eastern Asia and eastern North America (EAS-ENA) have twice as many species in Asia as in North America. Because lineages of these genera in Asia and North America are mostly sister pairs, they share a common history of adaptation and ecological relationship before disjunction. Thus, the diversity anomaly in EAS-ENA genera is not an artefact of taxon or habitat sampling but reflects differences in the net diversification (speciation-extinction) of the lineages in each of the continents. Here we propose that the most probable cause of the EAS-ENA anomaly in diversity is the extreme physiographical heterogeneity of temperate eastern Asia, especially compared with eastern North America, which in conjunction with climate and sea-level change has provided abundant opportunities for evolutionary radiation through allopatric speciation.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          Nature
          Nature
          Springer Science and Business Media LLC
          0028-0836
          0028-0836
          Sep 14 2000
          : 407
          : 6801
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Department of Forest Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
          Article
          10.1038/35025052
          11001054
          bcc3a1c6-3143-4559-9024-12113ecef563
          History

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