Journal
SCIENCE
Volume 309, Issue 5741, Pages 1722-1725Publisher
AMER ASSOC ADVANCEMENT SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1126/science.1115576
Keywords
-
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
South Africa's Mediterranean-climate fynbos shrubland is a hot spot of species diversity, but its diversity patterns contrast strongly with other high-diversity areas, including the Amazon rain forest. With its extremely high levels of endemism and species turnover, fynbos is made up of dissimilar local communities that are species-rich but relatively poor in rare species. Using neutral ecological theory, we show that the relative species-abundance distributions in fynbos can be explained by migration rates that are two orders of magnitude lower than they are in tropical rain forests. Speciation rates, which are indexed by the biodiversity parameter Theta, are estimated to be higher than they are in any previously examined plant system.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available