What is the relationship between species richness and latitudinal gradient?
Ultimately, the latitudinal gradient in species richness must be a consequence of a greater period of net diversification in the tropics, likely following the origins of life there, or higher speciation rates and/or lower extinction rates at low latitudes compared with other regions.
How does latitude affect species diversity and richness?
Explanation: This idea is also referred to as the latitudinal diversity gradient, meaning that as you move from the equator towards the poles, diversity lessens. This pattern is one of the oldest observed in ecology.
What is the relationship between species richness and latitudinal gradient Class 12?
Latitudinal gradients: Species diversity generally decreases as we move away from the equator towards the poles. Tropics have more species than temperate or polar areas. Many hypotheses have been proposed by scientists to explain greater diversity in the tropics.
Which of these best describes the latitudinal gradient in species richness?
2. Which of these best describes the latitudinal gradient in species richness? b. There tends to be a greater number of species in midlatitudes.
How does species diversity change at latitude and altitude level?
Solution : Species diversity increases from high altitude or latitude to low altitude or latitude due to the increase in temperature and seasonal variability in the concerned area.
What explains latitudinal diversity gradients?
In summary, palaeontological data for many taxonomic groups are consistent with the hypothesis that the latitudinal diversity gradient is a result of higher rates of diversification in the tropics compared with temperate and polar regions, and the available evidence suggests that this difference is due to higher …
Does species richness increase with altitude?
A pattern in species richness is also observed as one moves along an elevational gradient; generally, species richness is thought to decline with increasing elevation.
What is species richness vs species diversity?
Species richness is simply the number of species in a community. Species diversity is more complex, and includes a measure of the number of species in a community, and a measure of the abundance of each species. Species diversity is usually described by an index, such as Shannon’s Index H’.
What determines species richness?
Species richness is often determined by dividing the number of species observed by the total area of the defined ecosystem.
Why does species richness decrease with altitude?
In the paper by Allouche et al. (1), the authors suggested that species richness decreases at high levels of habitat diversity because the area available per habitat decreases [area–heterogeneity tradeoff hypothesis (AHTO)].
How does species richness differ from species evenness?
The number of species living in a particular area is known as species richness. Species evenness refers to the relative abundance of each species in a particular area and it is a measure of whether a particular ecosystem is numerically dominated by one species or is represented by a similar number of species.
What is the relationship between elevation and latitude?
Elevation and latitude are related because they have similar effects on temperature. As the elevation increases, the temperature of the air decreases, which is likewise with latitude.
What is the latitudinal gradient in biodiversity?
Latitudinal gradients in species diversity From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The pattern The increase in species richness or biodiversity that occurs from the poles to the tropics, often referred to as the latitudinal gradient in species diversity, is one of the most widely recognized patterns in ecology.
Does the large area of the tropics explain latitudinal grades in species diversity?
S2CID 40145348. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2019-03-03. Rohde, K. (1997). “The larger area of the tropics does not explain latitudinal gradients in species diversity”. Oikos. 79 (1): 169–172. doi: 10.2307/3546102.
Is species richness declining along latitudinal gradients of terrestrial taxa?
Latitudinal gradients of terrestrial taxa commonly display a decline in species richness from the equator to the poles.
Why study grades of species richness?
Historically, research has focused on gradients of species richness (i.e., the number of species in an assemblage) because that was the only information available to effectively evaluate patterns of biodiversity at broad spatial extents ( Fig. 2 ).