Studies examining the relationship between species richness and the productivity of ecological communities have taken one of two opposite viewpoints, viewing either productivity as a primary driver of richness or richness as a driver of productivity. Recently, verbal and graphical hypotheses have been proposed that attempt to merge these perspectives by clarifying the causal pathways that link ...

1. Biological invasions threaten biodiversity, and understanding the factors that influence a community’s susceptibility to invasion informs both management of invasive species and conservation efforts towards promoting biodiversity. 2. In this study, we examined the native–exotic richness relationships (NERR) at two spatial scales and asked what variables mediate the relationship between nativ...

Bird species richness is mediated by local, regional, and historical factors, for example, competition, environmental heterogeneity, contemporary, and historical climate. Here, we related bird species richness with phylogenetic relatedness of bird assemblages, plant species richness, topography, contemporary climate, and glacial-interglacial climate change to investigate the relative importance...

Measuring Richness and Poverty: A Micro Data Application to Europe and Germany In this paper, we define a new class of richness measures. In contrast to the often used headcount, these new measures are sensitive to changes in rich persons’ income and therefore allow for a more sophisticated analysis of richness. We demonstrate the application of these new measures to analyze the development of ...

Understanding species richness patterns represents one of the most fundamental problems in ecology. Most research in this area has focused on spatial gradients of species richness, with a smaller area of emphasis dedicated to understanding the temporal dynamics of richness. However, few attempts have been made to understand the linkages between the spatial and temporal patterns related to richn...

We analyzed geographic patterns of richness in both the breeding and winter season in relation to a remotely sensed index of seasonal production (normalized difference vegetation index [NDVI]) and to measures of habitat heterogeneity at four different spatial resolutions. The relationship between avian richness and NDVI was consistent between seasons, suggesting that the way in which available ...

Although tropical environments are often considered biodiversity hotspots, it is precisely in such environments where least is known about the factors that drive species richness. Here, we use phylogenetic comparative analyses to study correlates of species richness for the largest Neotropical amphibian radiation: New World direct-developing frogs. Clade-age and species richness were nonsignifi...

DENSLOW M. W. (Department of Biology, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608), M. W. PALMER (Department of Botany, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078), AND Z. E. MURRELL (Department of Biology, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608). Patterns of native and exotic vascular plant richness along an elevational gradient from sea level to the summit of the Appalachian Mou...

Northeast (NE) China covers three climatic zones and contains all the major forest types of NE Asia. We sampled 108 forest plots in six nature reserves across NE China to examine the influence of climate and local factors (canopy seasonality, successional stage, topography and forest structure) on geographic patterns of plant richness. We analyzed the relative effects of different factors at tw...