Department of Biology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA.
Biol Lett. 2010 Dec 23;6(6):769-72. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2010.0151. Epub 2010 May 12.
Tropical forest canopies house most of the globe's diversity, yet little is known about global patterns and drivers of canopy diversity. Here, we present models of ant species density, using climate, abundance and habitat (i.e. canopy versus litter) as predictors. Ant species density is positively associated with temperature and precipitation, and negatively (or non-significantly) associated with two metrics of seasonality, precipitation seasonality and temperature range. Ant species density was significantly higher in canopy samples, but this difference disappeared once abundance was considered. Thus, apparent differences in species density between canopy and litter samples are probably owing to differences in abundance-diversity relationships, and not differences in climate-diversity relationships. Thus, it appears that canopy and litter ant assemblages share a common abundance-diversity relationship influenced by similar but not identical climatic drivers.
热带雨林的树冠层容纳了全球大部分的生物多样性，但人们对树冠层多样性的全球模式和驱动因素知之甚少。在这里，我们使用气候、丰度和生境（即树冠层与凋落物）作为预测因子，建立了蚂蚁物种密度模型。蚂蚁物种密度与温度和降水呈正相关，与两个季节性指标（降水季节性和温度范围）呈负相关（或不显著相关）。在树冠层样本中，蚂蚁物种密度明显更高，但在考虑丰度后，这种差异就消失了。因此，树冠层和凋落物样本中物种密度的明显差异可能是由于丰度-多样性关系的差异，而不是气候-多样性关系的差异。因此，树冠层和凋落物蚂蚁群落似乎共享一个由相似但不完全相同的气候驱动因素影响的共同丰度-多样性关系。
