Ecological biogeography of southern ocean islands: the importance of considering spatial issues

The American Naturalist
S Selmi, T Boulinier

Abstract

Understanding patterns of among-island variation in species richness has long been an important question in ecology and biogeography. However, despite the clear spatial nature of the data used for such investigations, the spatial distribution of the different sampled locations is rarely explicitly considered, which may be critical for statistical and biological reasons. In a recent study, Chown et al. (1998) investigated the relationships between species richness of different indigenous and introduced taxonomic groups and a variety of variables characterizing Southern Ocean islands, and here, we use these data to address spatial issues. As predicted, we found spatial autocorrelation in species richness for terrestrial taxa with high dispersal ability or for terrestrial taxa that had time to disperse locally (introduced land birds and indigenous taxa) but not for taxa that had low opportunity to disperse to nearby islands (introduced plants, insects, and mammals), which suggests that colonization from nearby islands has played an important role in shaping present-day patterns of among-island variation in species richness. Interestingly, in several cases, the estimated effect of variables changed when spatial covariance was incor...Continue Reading

Citations

Oct 20, 2007·Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society·Gary W Luck
Dec 1, 2001·Annual Review of Entomology·Stewart H Berlocher, Jeffrey L Feder
Mar 26, 2003·The American Naturalist·Bradford A Hawkins, Eric E Porter
Feb 25, 2005·Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society·Yves FrenotDana M Bergstrom
Sep 22, 2007·Conservation Biology : the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology·Marco Pautasso, Michael L McKinney
May 29, 2007·Conservation Biology : the Journal of the Society for Conservation Biology·Vincent DevictorFrédéric Jiguet
Mar 18, 2016·Annual Review of Entomology·Steven L Chown, Peter Convey
Nov 9, 2006·Ecology·Daniel A Griffith, Pedro R Peres-Neto
May 8, 2007·Ecological Applications : a Publication of the Ecological Society of America·Aurélie Husté, Thierry Boulinier
Apr 5, 2020·Scientific Reports·Aurora M RicartPeter I Macreadie

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