Fossil leaves reveal drivers of herbivore functional diversity during the Cenozoic.

Herbivorous arthropods are the most diverse group of multicellular organisms on Earth. The most discussed drivers of their inordinate taxonomic and functional diversity are high niche availability associated with the diversity of host plants and dense niche packing due to host partitioning among herbivores. However, the relative contributions of these two factors to dynamics in the diversity of herbivores throughout Earth's history remain unresolved.

Projected climate change impacts on the phylogenetic diversity of the world's terrestrial birds: more than species numbers.

Ongoing climate change is a major threat to biodiversity. As abiotic tolerances and dispersal abilities vary, species-specific responses have the potential to further amplify or ameliorate the ensuing impacts on species assemblages. Here, we investigate the effects of climate change on species distributions across non-marine birds, quantifying its projected impact on species richness (SR) as well as on different aspects of phylogenetic diversity globally.

Global plant-frugivore trait matching is shaped by climate and biogeographic history.

Species interactions are influenced by the trait structure of local multi-trophic communities. However, it remains unclear whether mutualistic interactions in particular can drive trait patterns at the global scale, where climatic constraints and biogeographic processes gain importance. Here we evaluate global relationships between traits of frugivorous birds and palms (Arecaceae), and how these relationships are affected, directly or indirectly, by assemblage richness, climate and biogeographic history.

Climatic effects on niche evolution in a passerine bird clade depend on paleoclimate reconstruction method.

Climatic niches describe the climatic conditions in which species can persist. Shifts in climatic niches have been observed to coincide with major climatic change, suggesting that species adapt to new conditions. We test the relationship between rates of climatic niche evolution and paleoclimatic conditions through time for 65 Old-World flycatcher species (Aves: Muscicapidae).

Direct and plant-mediated effects of climate on bird diversity in tropical mountains.

Aim: Although patterns of biodiversity across the globe are well studied, there is still a controversial debate about the underlying mechanisms and their generality across biogeographic scales. In particular, it is unclear to what extent diversity patterns along environmental gradients are directly driven by abiotic factors, such as climate, or indirectly mediated through biotic factors, such as resource effects on consumers.

Location: Andes, Southern Ecuador; Mt.

A tale of two seasons: The link between seasonal migration and climatic niches in passerine birds.

The question of whether migratory birds track a specific climatic niche by seasonal movements has important implications for understanding the evolution of migration, the factors affecting species' distributions, and the responses of migrants to climate change. Despite much research, previous studies of bird migration have produced mixed results. However, whether migrants track climate is only one half of the question, the other being why residents remain in the same geographic range year-round.

Trait-Based Assessments of Climate-Change Impacts on Interacting Species.

Plant-animal interactions are fundamentally important in ecosystems, but have often been ignored by studies of climate-change impacts on biodiversity. Here, we present a trait-based framework for predicting the responses of interacting plants and animals to climate change. We distinguish three pathways along which climate change can impact interacting species in ecological communities: (i) spatial and temporal mismatches in the occurrence and abundance of species, (ii) the formation of novel interactions and secondary extinctions, and (iii) alterations of the dispersal ability of plants.

The Latitudinal Diversity Gradient: Novel Understanding through Mechanistic Eco-evolutionary Models.

The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) is one of the most widely studied patterns in ecology, yet no consensus has been reached about its underlying causes. We argue that the reasons for this are the verbal nature of existing hypotheses, the failure to mechanistically link interacting ecological and evolutionary processes to the LDG, and the fact that empirical patterns are often consistent with multiple explanations. To address this issue, we synthesize current LDG hypotheses, uncovering their eco-evolutionary mechanisms, hidden assumptions, and commonalities.

Moving in the Anthropocene: Global reductions in terrestrial mammalian movements.

Animal movement is fundamental for ecosystem functioning and species survival, yet the effects of the anthropogenic footprint on animal movements have not been estimated across species. Using a unique GPS-tracking database of 803 individuals across 57 species, we found that movements of mammals in areas with a comparatively high human footprint were on average one-half to one-third the extent of their movements in areas with a low human footprint. We attribute this reduction to behavioral changes of individual animals and to the exclusion of species with long-range movements from areas with higher human impact.

Mammal body size evolution in North America and Europe over 20 Myr: similar trends generated by different processes.

Because body size interacts with many fundamental biological properties of a species, body size evolution can be an essential component of the generation and maintenance of biodiversity. Here we investigate how body size evolution can be linked to the clade-specific diversification dynamics in different geographical regions. We analyse an extensive body size dataset of Neogene large herbivores (covering approx.

Twenty-million-year relationship between mammalian diversity and primary productivity.

At global and regional scales, primary productivity strongly correlates with richness patterns of extant animals across space, suggesting that resource availability and climatic conditions drive patterns of diversity. However, the existence and consistency of such diversity-productivity relationships through geological history is unclear. Here we provide a comprehensive quantitative test of the diversity-productivity relationship for terrestrial large mammals through time across broad temporal and spatial scales.

A guide to phylogenetic metrics for conservation, community ecology and macroecology.

The use of phylogenies in ecology is increasingly common and has broadened our understanding of biological diversity. Ecological sub-disciplines, particularly conservation, community ecology and macroecology, all recognize the value of evolutionary relationships but the resulting development of phylogenetic approaches has led to a proliferation of phylogenetic diversity metrics. The use of many metrics across the sub-disciplines hampers potential meta-analyses, syntheses, and generalizations of existing results.

Global patterns and drivers of phylogenetic structure in island floras.

Islands are ideal for investigating processes that shape species assemblages because they are isolated and have discrete boundaries. Quantifying phylogenetic assemblage structure allows inferences about these processes, in particular dispersal, environmental filtering and in-situ speciation. Here, we link phylogenetic assemblage structure to island characteristics across 393 islands worldwide and 37,041 vascular plant species (representing angiosperms overall, palms and ferns).

Correlates of Recent Declines of Rodents in Northern and Southern Australia: Habitat Structure Is Critical.

Australia has experienced dramatic declines and extinctions of its native rodent species over the last 200 years, particularly in southern Australia. In the tropical savanna of northern Australia significant declines have occurred only in recent decades. The later onset of these declines suggests that the causes may differ from earlier declines in the south.

Ecological, historical and evolutionary determinants of modularity in weighted seed-dispersal networks.

Modularity is a recurrent and important property of bipartite ecological networks. Although well-resolved ecological networks describe interaction frequencies between species pairs, modularity of bipartite networks has been analysed only on the basis of binary presence-absence data. We employ a new algorithm to detect modularity in weighted bipartite networks in a global analysis of avian seed-dispersal networks.

Response to Comment on "An update of Wallace's zoogeographic regions of the world".

Kreft and Jetz's critique of our recent update of Wallace's zoogeographical regions disregards the extensive sensitivity analyses we undertook, which demonstrate the robustness of our results to the choice of phylogenetic data and clustering algorithm. Their suggested distinction between "transition zones" and biogeographic regions is worthy of further investigation but is thus far unsubstantiated.

Diversity in time and space: wanted dead and alive.

Current patterns of biological diversity are influenced by both historical and present-day factors, yet research in ecology and evolution is largely split between paleontological and neontological studies. Responding to recent calls for integration, we provide a conceptual framework that capitalizes on data and methods from both disciplines to investigate fundamental processes. We highlight the opportunities arising from a combined approach with four examples: (i) which mechanisms generate spatial and temporal variation in diversity; (ii) how traits evolve; (iii) what determines the temporal dynamics of geographical ranges and ecological niches; and (iv) how species-environment and biotic interactions shape community structure.

An update of Wallace's zoogeographic regions of the world.

Modern attempts to produce biogeographic maps focus on the distribution of species, and the maps are typically drawn without phylogenetic considerations. Here, we generate a global map of zoogeographic regions by combining data on the distributions and phylogenetic relationships of 21,037 species of amphibians, birds, and mammals. We identify 20 distinct zoogeographic regions, which are grouped into 11 larger realms.

Ecological and evolutionary determinants for the adaptive radiation of the Madagascan vangas.

Adaptive radiation is the rapid diversification of a single lineage into many species that inhabit a variety of environments or use a variety of resources and differ in traits required to exploit these. Why some lineages undergo adaptive radiation is not well-understood, but filling unoccupied ecological space appears to be a common feature. We construct a complete, dated, species-level phylogeny of the endemic Vangidae of Madagascar.

Diversification and biogeographic patterns in four island radiations of passerine birds.

Declining diversification rates over time are a well-established evolutionary pattern, often interpreted as indicating initial rapid radiation with filling of ecological niche space. Here, we test the hypothesis that island radiations may show constant net diversification rates over time, due to continued expansion into new niche space in highly dispersive taxa. We investigate diversification patterns of four passerine bird families originating from the Indo-Pacific archipelagos, and link these to biogeographic patterns to provide independent indications of niche filling.

The ghosts of mammals past: biological and geographical patterns of global mammalian extinction across the Holocene.

Although the recent historical period is usually treated as a temporal base-line for understanding patterns of mammal extinction, mammalian biodiversity loss has also taken place throughout the Late Quaternary. We explore the spatial, taxonomic and phylogenetic patterns of 241 mammal species extinctions known to have occurred during the Holocene up to the present day. To assess whether our understanding of mammalian threat processes has been affected by excluding these taxa, we incorporate extinct species data into analyses of the impact of body mass on extinction risk.

The shape of mammalian phylogeny: patterns, processes and scales.

Mammalian phylogeny is far too asymmetric for all contemporaneous lineages to have had equal chances of diversifying. We consider this asymmetry or imbalance from four perspectives. First, we infer a minimal set of 'regime changes'-points at which net diversification rate has changed-identifying 15 significant radiations and 12 clades that may be 'downshifts'.

Phylogenetic diversity does not capture body size variation at risk in the world's mammals.

Mammals contribute to important ecosystem processes and services, but many mammalian species are threatened with extinction. We compare how global patterns in three measures of mammalian diversity--species richness, phylogenetic diversity (PD) and body mass variance (BMV)--would change if all currently threatened species were lost. Given that many facets of species' ecology and life history scale predictably with body mass, the BMV in a region roughly reflects the diversity of species' roles within ecosystems and so is a simple proxy for functional diversity (FD).

Selectivity in mammalian extinction risk and threat types: a new measure of phylogenetic signal strength in binary traits.

The strength of phylogenetic signal in extinction risk can give insight into the mechanisms behind species' declines. Nevertheless, no existing measure of phylogenetic pattern in a binary trait, such as extinction-risk status, measures signal strength in a way that can be compared among data sets. We developed a new measure for phylogenetic signal of binary traits, D, which simulations show gives robust results with data sets of more than 50 species, even when the proportion of threatened species is low.