Enquist Brian J, Haskell John P, Tiffney Bruce H
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA.
Nature. 2002 Oct 10;419(6907):610-3. doi: 10.1038/nature01069.
A central goal of evolutionary ecology is to identify the general features maintaining the diversity of species assemblages. Understanding the taxonomic and ecological characteristics of ecological communities provides a means to develop and test theories about the processes that regulate species coexistence and diversity. Here, using data from woody plant communities from different biogeographic regions, continents and geologic time periods, we show that the number of higher taxa is a general power-function of species richness that is significantly different from randomized assemblages. In general, we find that local communities are characterized by fewer higher taxa than would be expected by chance. The degree of taxonomic diversity is influenced by modes of dispersal and potential biotic interactions. Further, changes in local diversity are accompanied by regular changes in the partitioning of community biomass between taxa that are also described by a power function. Our results indicate that local and regional processes have consistently regulated community diversity and biomass partitioning for millions of years.
进化生态学的一个核心目标是确定维持物种组合多样性的一般特征。了解生态群落的分类学和生态学特征为发展和检验有关调节物种共存和多样性过程的理论提供了一种方法。在这里，利用来自不同生物地理区域、大陆和地质时期的木本植物群落的数据，我们表明高等分类单元的数量是物种丰富度的一般幂函数，这与随机组合有显著差异。一般来说，我们发现当地群落的特征是高等分类单元比偶然预期的要少。分类多样性的程度受扩散模式和潜在生物相互作用的影响。此外，局部多样性的变化伴随着群落生物量在分类单元之间分配的规律性变化，这也可用幂函数来描述。我们的结果表明，局部和区域过程在数百万年里一直调节着群落多样性和生物量分配。
