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Species diversity can drive speciation

Nature volume 434, pages 1015–1017 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

A fundamental question in evolutionary ecology and conservation biology is: why do some areas contain greater species diversity than others? Island biogeographic theory has identified the roles of immigration and extinction in relation to area size and proximity to source areas1,2, and the role of speciation is also recognized as an important factor3,4,5,6. However, one as yet unexplored possibility is that species diversity itself might help to promote speciation, and indeed the central tenets of island biogeographic theory support such a prediction. Here we use data for plants and arthropods of the volcanic archipelagos of the Canary and Hawaiian Islands to address whether there is a positive relationship between species diversity and rate of diversification. Our index of diversification for each island is the proportion of species that are endemic, and we test our prediction that this increases with increasing species number. We show that even after controlling for several important physical features of islands, diversification is strongly related to species number.

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Figure 1: Origin of island endemism.
Figure 2: Elimination of island endemism.
Figure 3: Bivariate plots for the relationship between diversification and species richness.

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Acknowledgements

We thank W. Sutherland, G. Hewitt, M. Taylor and T. Givnish for constructive comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation, School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

    Brent C. Emerson & Niclas Kolm

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  1. Brent C. Emerson
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  2. Niclas Kolm
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Correspondence to Brent C. Emerson.

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The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Data

This file contains additional analyses to ensure results were not simply a statistical artefact from non-independence between measures of diversification and species richness. This file also contains Supplementary Table S1. (DOC 58 kb)

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Emerson, B., Kolm, N. Species diversity can drive speciation. Nature 434, 1015–1017 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature03450

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