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Species Diversity in Space and Time examines crucial questions about species diversity, and seeks to set the agenda for research well into the next century. Why do larger areas have more species? What makes diversity so high near the equator? Has the number of species grown in the last 600 million years? Does habitat diversity support species diversity, or is it the other way around? What reduces diversity in ecologically productive places? At what scales of space and time do diversity patterns hold? Do the mechanisms that produce them vary with scale? Surprisingly, it is argued, many of these questions have reasonably likely answers.
Preface
1. The road ahead
2. Patterns in space
3. Temporal patterns
4. Dimensionless patterns
5. Speciation
6. Extinction
7. Evolution of the relationship between habitat diversity and species diversity
8. Species-area curves in ecological time
9. Species-area curves in evolutionary time
10. Paleobiological patterns
11. Other patterns with dynamic roots
12. Energy flow and diversity
13. A hierarchical dynamic puzzle
References
Index
"I will recommend Species Diversity in Space and Time to my graduate students to read because the good bits outweigh the bad. It will give us much to think about, and should generate some lively debates."
- John H. Lawton, Nature
