Abstract
Large scale diversity patterns are the response of organisms to current environmental conditions and past environmental changes. Niche conservatism provides a conceptual framework allowing the integration of current and historical events to explain diversity. This thesis uses four case studies incorporating contemporary, evolutionary and historical determinants of diversity. To achieve a wide range of representation, the case studies analyze three eco-geographical rules explaining patterns in species richness, body size and range size, for three different taxonomic groups (i.e. reptiles, birds and mammals) and within three geographical regions (i.e. East and South of Africa, the New World, the Globe). Results illustrate how linking evolutionary and historical processes to niche conservatism is key to understanding diversity patterns. Accounting for evidence contained in the fossil record, in palaeoclimatic or palaeogeographic reconstructions, or expressed by phylogenetic relationships and past dispersal events will enable us to comprehend why Earth’s biota is distributed as it does.
Highlights
In this PhD thesis, I provided empirical evidence that the incorporation of contemporary, evolutionary and historical aspects is necessary if we want to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms that underlay diversity patterns of terrestrial vertebrates
I compared clades that originated under different environmental conditions through geological history and tested whether their species richness patterns could be linked to the ancestral environmental conditions under which clades arose as predicted by niche conservatism
I inspected the effects of historical large scale dispersal events on geographic patterns of body size in New World mammals
Summary
In this PhD thesis, I provided empirical evidence that the incorporation of contemporary, evolutionary and historical aspects is necessary if we want to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms that underlay diversity patterns of terrestrial vertebrates. Commonly used in macroecology and often utilized in biogeography, diversity patterns are the product of biota’s responses to current environmental conditions and evolutionary responses to past environmental conditions (Ricklefs 2004).
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