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

      Nature
      Asia, Climate, Ecosystem, North America, Plants, genetics

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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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          Chronology of fluctuating sea levels since the triassic.

          Advances in sequence stratigraphy and the development of depositional models have helped explain the origin of genetically related sedimentary packages during sea level cycles. These concepts have provided the basis for the recognition of sea level events in subsurface data and in outcrops of marine sediments around the world. Knowledge of these events has led to a new generation of Mesozoic and Cenozoic global cycle charts that chronicle the history of sea level fluctuations during the past 250 million years in greater detail than was possible from seismic-stratigraphic data alone. An effort has been made to develop a realistic and accurate time scale and widely applicable chronostratigraphy and to integrate depositional sequences documented in public domain outcrop sections from various basins with this chronostratigraphic framework. A description of this approach and an account of the results, illustrated by sea level cycle charts of the Cenozoic, Cretaceous, Jurassic, and Triassic intervals, are presented.
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            Community diversity: relative roles of local and regional processes.

            The species richness (diversity) of local plant and animal assemblages-biological communities-balances regional processes of species formation and geographic dispersal, which add species to communities, against processes of predation, competitive exclusion, adaptation, and stochastic variation, which may promote local extinction. During the past three decades, ecologists have sought to explain differences in local diversity by the influence of the physical environment on local interactions among species, interactions that are generally believed to limit the number of coexisting species. But diversity of the biological community often fails to converge under similar physical conditions, and local diversity bears a demonstrable dependence upon regional diversity. These observations suggest that regional and historical processes, as well as unique events and circumstances, profoundly influence local community structure. Ecologists must broaden their concepts of community processes and incorporate data from systematics, biogeography, and paleontology into analyses of ecological patterns and tests of community theory.
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              Energy and Large-Scale Patterns of Animal- and Plant-Species Richness

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                11001054
                10.1038/35025052

                Chemistry
                Asia,Climate,Ecosystem,North America,Plants,genetics
                Chemistry
                Asia, Climate, Ecosystem, North America, Plants, genetics

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