Qian Hong, Dai Zun, Wang Jian
Research and Collections Center, Illinois State Museum, 1011 East Ash Street, Springfield, IL 62703, USA.
Bryology Laboratory, School of Life Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China.
Plant Divers. 2024 May 18;46(4):537-541. doi: 10.1016/j.pld.2024.05.004. eCollection 2024 Jul.
Species richness generally decreases with increasing latitude, a biodiversity gradient that has long been considered as one of the few laws in ecology. This latitudinal diversity gradient has been observed in many major groups of organisms. In plants, the latitudinal diversity gradient has been observed in vascular plants, angiosperms, ferns, and liverworts. However, a conspicuous latitudinal diversity gradient in mosses at a global or continental scale has not been observed until now. Here, we analyze a comprehensive data set including moss species in each band of 20° in latitude worldwide. Our results show that moss species richness decreases strongly with increasing latitude, regardless of whether the globe is considered as a whole or different longitudinal segments (e.g., Old World versus New World) are considered separately. This result holds when variation in area size among latitudinal bands is taken into account. Pearson's correlation coefficient between latitude and species richness is -0.99 for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres. Because bryophytes are an extant lineage of early land plants and because mosses not only include most of extant species of bryophytes but also are important constituents of most terrestrial ecosystems, understanding geographic patterns of mosses is particularly important. The finding of our study fills a critical knowledge gap.
物种丰富度通常随着纬度的增加而降低，这种生物多样性梯度长期以来一直被视为生态学中为数不多的规律之一。这种纬度多样性梯度在许多主要生物类群中都有观察到。在植物中，维管植物、被子植物、蕨类植物和苔藓植物都存在纬度多样性梯度。然而，迄今为止尚未观察到全球或大陆尺度上苔藓植物显著的纬度多样性梯度。在此，我们分析了一个综合数据集，该数据集包含全球纬度每20°区间内的苔藓物种。我们的结果表明，无论将全球视为一个整体还是分别考虑不同的经度区域（如东半球与西半球），苔藓物种丰富度都随着纬度的增加而大幅降低。当考虑到纬度带之间面积大小的差异时，这一结果依然成立。北半球和南半球纬度与物种丰富度之间的皮尔逊相关系数均为-0.99。由于苔藓植物是早期陆地植物现存的一个谱系，并且苔藓不仅包含了苔藓植物现存的大多数物种，还是大多数陆地生态系统的重要组成部分，因此了解苔藓植物的地理分布格局尤为重要。我们的研究发现填补了一个关键的知识空白。
