Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6T1Z4; Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Biodiversity Research Centre, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, V6T1Z4; Department of Zoology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2021 Sep;36(9):778-786. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2021.05.003. Epub 2021 May 31.
Emerging large-scale datasets coupled with statistical advances have provided new insights into the processes that generate the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG). But many of these studies run into an old, if often underappreciated, problem: The interpretation of the data critically depends on the consistent application of criteria to define what constitutes a species. This is particularly pernicious for the LDG because good species have been easier to recognize in temperate than in tropical regions. We provide evidence that this latitudinal taxonomy gradient exists, discuss how this potentially impacts inferences about latitudinal variation in ecoevolutionary processes such as population differentiation and speciation, and provide a roadmap for how to mitigate taxonomic biases in the study of biodiversity patterns.
新兴的大规模数据集和统计方法的进步为研究产生纬度多样性梯度（LDG）的过程提供了新的见解。但这些研究中存在一个由来已久的问题，如果不是经常被忽视的话，那就是：数据的解释在很大程度上取决于一致应用标准来定义什么是物种。这对于 LDG 来说尤其有害，因为在温带地区比在热带地区更容易识别出好的物种。我们提供了证据表明这种纬度分类梯度确实存在，讨论了它如何潜在地影响关于人口分化和物种形成等生态进化过程的纬度变化的推断，并提供了如何减轻生物多样性模式研究中分类偏见的路线图。
