Latitudinal temperature gradients and climate change

Correction: Range-Wide Latitudinal and Elevational Temperature Gradients for the World's Terrestrial Birds: Implications under Global Climate Change

Species' geographical distributions are tracking latitudinal and elevational surface temperature gradients under global climate change. To evaluate the opportunities to track these gradients across space, we provide a first baseline assessment of the steepness of these gradients for the world's terrestrial birds. Within the breeding ranges of 9,014 bird species, we characterized the spatial gra...

Decadal Changes in the World's Coastal Latitudinal Temperature Gradients

Most of the world's living marine resources inhabit coastal environments, where average thermal conditions change predictably with latitude. These coastal latitudinal temperature gradients (CLTG) coincide with important ecological clines,e.g., in marine species diversity or adaptive genetic variations, but how tightly thermal and ecological gradients are linked remains unclear. A first step is ...

Latitudinal, longitudinal and depth gradients

Explaining latitudinal diversity gradients.

DIFFERENCES IN MEASURED RATES OF SPECIation and extinction among living species are commonly used to explain latitudinal diversity gradients. The logic is straightforward: the higher the net diversification rate (the difference between the speciation and extinction rate), the greater the number of species. In this vein, J. T. Weir and D. Schluter conclude from their recent study of birds and ma...

Incumbency, diversity, and latitudinal gradients

s with Programs 38(7):169. Krug, A. Z., D. Jablonski, and J. W. Valentine. 2008. Species-genus ratios reflect a global history of diversification and range expansion in marine bivalves. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B (published online 13 February 2008). Laptikhovsky, V. 2006. Latitudinal and bathymetric trends in egg size variation: a new look at Thorson’s and Rass’s rules. Marine...