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- Title
Vertebrate range sizes indicate that mountains may be ‘higher’ in the tropics.
- Authors
McCain, Christy M.
- Abstract
In 1967, Daniel Janzen proposed the influential, but largely untested hypothesis, that tropical mountain passes are physiologically higher than temperate mountains. I test his key prediction, the one upon which all the others rely: namely, that elevational range sizes of organisms get larger on mountains at increasing latitudes. My analyses use 170 montane gradients spanning 36.5° S to 48.2° N latitude compiled from over 80 years of research and 16 500 species of rodents, bats, birds, lizards, snakes, salamanders, and frogs. In support of Janzen' s prediction, I find that elevational range size increases with increasing latitude for all vertebrate groups except rodents. I document additional lines of evidence for temperature variability as a plausible mechanism for trends in vertebrate range size, including strong effects of thermoregulation and daily temperature variability, and a weak effect of precipitation.
- Subjects
BIOLOGICAL adaptation; VERTEBRATE populations; CLIMATE &; biogeography; GEOGRAPHICAL positions; LATITUDE; BODY temperature regulation; TEMPERATURE effect
- Publication
Ecology Letters, 2009, Vol 12, Issue 6, p550
- ISSN
1461-023X
- Publication type
Letter
- DOI
10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01308.x