title: Region effects influence local tree species diversity.
abstract: Global patterns of biodiversity reflect both regional and local processes, but the relative importance of local ecological limits to species coexistence, as influenced by the physical environment, in contrast to regional processes including species production, dispersal, and extinction, is poorly understood. Failure to distinguish regional influences from local effects has been due, in part, to sampling limitations at small scales, environmental heterogeneity within local or regional samples, and incomplete geographic sampling of species. Here, we use a global dataset comprising 47 forest plots to demonstrate significant region effects on diversity, beyond the influence of local climate, which together explain more than 92% of the global variation in local forest tree species richness. Significant region effects imply that large-scale processes shaping the regional diversity of forest trees exert influence down to the local scale, where they interact with local processes to determine the number of coexisting species.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, University of Missouri, St. Louis, MO 63121-4499; ricklefs@umsl.edu fhe@ualberta.ca.
authors.forename: Robert E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Ricklefs
authors.affiliation: Sun Yat-sen University-Alberta Joint Lab for Biodiversity Conservation, State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China; Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2H1 Canada ricklefs@umsl.edu fhe@ualberta.ca.
authors.forename: Fangliang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: He
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D005843:Geography; D038622:Internationality; D016014:Linear Models; D013045:Species Specificity; D014197:Trees / Q000502:physiology*; D014329:Tropical Climate
keywords: climate effect; forest dynamics plots; global biodiversity; latitudinal gradient; tree species richness