EEB 3408W Lecture Notes - Lecture 16: Gamma Diversity, Alpha Diversity, Beta Diversity
Document Summary
Differences in plant heights in areas with different amounts of rainfall. Habitat diversity because species do different things. Closer to the equator equals greater number of species. More species in the tropics because most groups originated there and are specialized for a tropical climate. Most species and clades have been unable to disperse out of the tropics because of conservatism. They do not have what it takes to live in the cloud. Greater time and area has led to higher species richness for most. Ther area effect in insular islands taxa. Number of land and freshwater bird species increases with island size in the. Species number is equal to constant * areaslope of log plot of species and area. The harder it is to get to an island means less species are there - distance. Closest to mainland islands have more species than farther ones. They are closer to the saturation number of species.