Patterns of Plant Species Diversity in California: Relation to Weather and Topography

The gamma diversity patterns of California vegetation including the total flora and its various life-form and taxonomic subdivisions can be largely explained in the statistical sense by climatic and topographic variables, and thus serve as a reasonable test of several of the proposed environmental hypotheses of diversity regulation. The actual relationship between environment and diversity patterns is more complex than ordinarily supposed. Topographic heterogeneity has a strong effect on patterns of the total flora and most subdivisions. Weather variables account for the bulk of the diversity patterns in the models used, but the results are unexpected in that favorableness indices (mean weather variables) are generally more important than indices of seasonality or irregularity. The results obtained in this study together with similar observations in other situations suggest that favorableness hypotheses deserve more theoretical and empirical attention.

[1]  R. Paine.  A Note on Trophic Complexity and Community Stability , 1969, The American Naturalist.

[2]  G. Likens,et al.  Niche Analysis of a Zooplankton Community , 1975, Science.

[3]  A. G. Fischer.  LATITUDINAL VARIATIONS IN ORGANIC DIVERSITY , 1960 .

[4]  S. Stearns.  THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE * : . 4120 HISTORY TRAITS : A Critique of the Theory and a Review of the Data , 2008 .

[5]  James W. Valentine,et al.  Evolutionary Paleoecology of the Marine Biosphere , 1974 .

[6]  J. Karr,et al.  Vegetation Structure and Avian Diversity in Several New World Areas , 1971, The American Naturalist.

[7]  A. Ross Kiester,et al.  Species Density of North American Amphibians and Reptiles , 1971 .

[8]  P. Munz.  Supplement to A California Flora , 2023 .

[9]  P. Raven,et al.  Ecological Parameters and Plant Species Diversity , 1968, The American Naturalist.

[10]  D. Janzen.  Herbivores and the Number of Tree Species in Tropical Forests , 1970, The American Naturalist.

[11]  G. Trewartha.  An introduction to climate. , 1980 .

[12]  James P. Collins,et al.  Environmental Certainty, Trophic Level, and Resource Availability in Life History Evolution , 1974, The American Naturalist.

[13]  J. Connell.  Diversity in tropical rain forests and coral reefs. , 1978, Science.

[14]  R. Peters,et al.  Tautology in Evolution and Ecology , 1976, The American Naturalist.

[15]  Eric R. Pianka,et al.  Geographical Trends in Numbers of Species , 1978, Science.

[16]  R. May.  Patterns of species abundance and diversity , 1975 .

[17]  J. Connell,et al.  The Ecological Regulation of Species Diversity , 1964, The American Naturalist.

[18]  D. Livingstone.  Late Quaternary Climatic Change in Africa , 1975 .

[19]  Y. Loya.  RECOLONIZATION OF RED SEA CORALS AFFECTED BY NATURAL CATASTROPHES AND MAN-MADE PERTURBATIONS' , 1976 .

[20]  H. G. Baker,et al.  Evolution in the Tropics , 1970 .

[21]  S. Hurlbert.  The Nonconcept of Species Diversity: A Critique and Alternative Parameters. , 1971, Ecology.

[22]  F. Fosberg,et al.  A Flora of Kern County, California , 1968 .

[23]  Maria Rosa Miracle.  Niche Structure in Freshwater Zooplankton: A Principal Components Approach , 1974 .

[24]  R. Margalef,et al.  Diversity and stability: a practical proposal and a model of interdependence. , 1969, Brookhaven symposia in biology.

[25]  R. Blackwelder.  Species Density of North American Recent Mammals , 1964 .

[26]  R. Whittaker.  Evolution and measurement of species diversity , 1972 .

[27]  R. E. Cook,et al.  Variation in Species Density of North American Birds , 1969 .

[28]  D. Culver,et al.  Diversity in Terrestrial Cave Communities , 1969 .

[29]  L. L. Wolf,et al.  Stability and Diversity at Three Trophic Levels in Terrestrial Successional Ecosystems , 1971, Science.

[30]  Robert K. Peet,et al.  The Measurement of Species Diversity , 1974 .

[31]  R. Macarthur,et al.  Environmental Factors Affecting Bird Species Diversity , 1964, The American Naturalist.

[32]  Montgomery Slatkin,et al.  The Dynamics of a Population in a Markovian Environment , 1978 .

[33]  G. E. Hutchinson,et al.  The Balance of Nature and Human Impact: The paradox of the plankton , 2013 .

[34]  R. Macarthur,et al.  The Theory of Island Biogeography , 1969 .

[35]  R. Levins.  Evolution in Changing Environments , 1968 .

[36]  L. G. Abele.  Comparative Species Richness in Fluctuating and Constant Environments: Coral-Associated Decapod Crustaceans , 1976, Science.

[37]  Sanders Hl,et al.  On the contribution of environmental predictability to species diversity. , 1969 .

[38]  R. H. Whittaker,et al.  Dominance and Diversity in Land Plant Communities , 1965, Science.

[39]  Edward O. Wilson,et al.  Experimental Zoogeography of Islands: The Colonization of Empty Islands , 1969 .

[40]  P. Richerson,et al.  Contemporaneous disequilibrium, a new hypothesis to explain the "paradox of the plankton". , 1970, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[41]  L. Slobodkin,et al.  On the contribution of environmental predictability to species diversity. , 1969, Brookhaven symposia in biology.

[42]  Ramón Margalef.  Perspectives in Ecological Theory , 1968 .

[43]  P. Sneath,et al.  Numerical Taxonomy , 1962, Nature.

[44]  H. L. Sanders.  Benthic marine diversity and the stability-time hypothesis. , 1969, Brookhaven symposia in biology.

[45]  H. L. Sanders,et al.  Marine Benthic Diversity: A Comparative Study , 1968, The American Naturalist.

[46]  F. Chapman,et al.  The distribution of bird-life in Colombia; , 1917 .

[47]  A. W. Küchler.  Potential Natural Vegetation of the Conterminous United States , 1965 .

[48]  J. Terborgh.  On the Notion of Favorableness in Plant Ecology , 1973, The American Naturalist.

[49]  D. I. Axelrod.  History of the Mediterranean Ecosystem in California , 1973 .

[50]  P. Munz,et al.  A California Flora , 1960 .

[51]  C. Monk.  Tree Species Diversity in the Eastern Deciduous Forest with Particular Reference to North Central Florida , 1967, The American Naturalist.

[52]  E. Pianka.  Latitudinal Gradients in Species Diversity: A Review of Concepts , 1966, The American Naturalist.

[53]  E. C. Pielou,et al.  An introduction to mathematical ecology , 1970 .

[54]  J. Terborgh.  Bird Species Diversity on an Andean Elevational Gradient , 1977 .

[55]  M. Turelli,et al.  Does environmental variability limit niche overlap? , 1978, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.