Browsing by Author "Birks, H. John B."
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- The human dimension of biodiversity changes on islandsPublication . Nogué, Sandra; Santos, Ana M. C.; Birks, H. John B.; Björck, Svante; Castilla-Beltrán, Alvaro; Connor, Simon; de Boer, Erik J.; Nascimento, Lea de; Felde, Vivian A.; Fernández-Palacios, José María; Froyd, Cynthia A.; Haberle, Simon G.; Hooghiemstra, Henry; Ljung, Karl; Norder, Sietze J.; Peñuelas, Josep; Prebble, Matthew; Stevenson, Janelle; Whittaker, Robert J.; Willis, Kathy J.; Wilmshurst, Janet M.; Steinbauer, Manuel J.Islands are among the last regions on Earth settled and transformed by human activities, and they provide replicated model systems for analysis of how people affect ecological functions. By analyzing 27 representative fossil pollen sequences encompassing the past 5000 years from islands globally, we quantified the rates of vegetation compositional change before and after human arrival. After human arrival, rates of turnover accelerate by a median factor of 11, with faster rates on islands colonized in the past 1500 years than for those colonized earlier. This global anthropogenic acceleration in turnover suggests that islands are on trajectories of continuing change. Strategies for biodiversity conservation and ecosystem restoration must acknowledge the long duration of human impacts and the degree to which ecological changes today differ from prehuman dynamics.
- Topography-driven isolation, speciation and a global increase of endemism with elevationPublication . Steinbauer, Manuel J.; Field, Richard; Grytnes, John-Arvid; Trigas, Panayiotis; Ah-Peng, Claudine; Attorre, Fabio; Birks, H. John B.; Borges, Paulo A. V.; Cardoso, Pedro; Chou, Chang-Hung; De Sanctis, Michele; Sequeira, Miguel M.; Duarte, Maria C.; Elias, Rui B.; Fernández-Palacios, José María; Gabriel, Rosalina; Gereau, Roy E.; Gillespie, Rosemary G.; Greimler, Josef; Harter, David E. V.; Huang, Tsurng-Juhn; Irl, Severin D. H.; Jeanmonod, Daniel; Jentsch, Anke; Jump, Alistair S.; Kueffer, Christoph; Nogué, Sandra; Otto, Rüdiger; Price, Jonathan; Romeiras, Maria M.; Strasberg, Dominique; Stuessy, Tod; Svenning, Jens-Christian; Vetaas, Ole R.; Beierkuhnlein, CarlAIM: Higher-elevation areas on islands and continental mountains tend to be separated by longer distances, predicting higher endemism at higher elevations; our study is the first to test the generality of the predicted pattern. We also compare it empirically with contrasting expectations from hypotheses invoking higher speciation with area, temperature and species richness. Location Thirty-two insular and 18 continental elevational gradients from around the world. Methods We compiled entire floras with elevation-specific occurrence information, and calculated the proportion of native species that are endemic (‘percent endemism’) in 100-m bands, for each of the 50 elevational gradients. Using generalized linear models, we tested the relationships between percent endemism and elevation, isolation, temperature, area and species richness. RESULTS: Percent endemism consistently increased monotonically with elevation, globally. This was independent of richness–elevation relationships, which had varying shapes but decreased with elevation at high elevations. The endemism–elevation relationships were consistent with isolation-related predictions, but inconsistent with hypotheses related to area, richness and temperature. Main conclusions Higher per-species speciation rates caused by increasing isolation with elevation are the most plausible and parsimonious explanation for the globally consistent pattern of higher endemism at higher elevations that we identify. We suggest that topography-driven isolation increases speciation rates in mountainous areas, across all elevations and increasingly towards the equator. If so, it represents a mechanism that may contribute to generating latitudinal diversity gradients in a way that is consistent with both present-day and palaeontological evidence.