Traits, trees and taxa: Global dimensions of biodiversity in mammals

Shan Huang*, Patrick R. Stephens, John L. Gittleman

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

40 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Measures of biodiversity encompass variation along several dimensions such as species richness (SR), phylogenetic diversity (PD) and functional/trait diversity (TD). At the global scale, it is widely recognized that SR and PD are strongly correlated, but the extent to which either tends to capture variation in TD is unclear. Here, we assess relationships among PD, SR and TD for a number of traits both across clades and regional assemblages of mammals. We also contrast results using two different measures of TD, trait variance and a new measure we refer to as trait bin filling (the number of orders of magnitude of variation that contain at least one species). When TD is defined as trait variance, PD is a much stronger correlate of TD than SR across clades, consistent with hypotheses about the conservation value of PD. However, when TD is defined as bin filling, PD and SR show similar correlations with TD across clades and space. We also investigate potential losses of SR, PD and TD if species that are currently threatened were to go extinct, and find that threatened PD is often a similar predictor of threatened TD as SR.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)4997-5003
Number of pages7
JournalProceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume279
Issue number1749
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2012

Keywords

  • Biodiversity
  • Mammals
  • Phylogenetic diversity
  • Species richness
  • Trait diversity

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Biochemistry,Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • General Immunology and Microbiology
  • General Environmental Science
  • General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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