The global demand for food and bioenergy changes associated with land use and land
cover change (LULCC) has raised concerns about the environment, global warming, and …

A latitudinal gradient in biodiversity has existed since before the time of the dinosaurs, yet
how and why this gradient arose remains unresolved. Here we review two major hypotheses …

Freshwater fish represent one-fourth of the world's vertebrates and provide irreplaceable
goods and services but are increasingly affected by human activities. A new index …

Metacommunity ecology links smaller-scale processes that have been the provenance of
population and community ecology—such as birth-death processes, species interactions …

Understanding the causes of spatial variation in species richness is a major research focus
of biogeography and macroecology. Gridded environmental data and species richness …

Global patterns of species richness and their structuring forces have fascinated biologists
since Darwin, and provide critical context for contemporary studies in ecology, evolution and …

The elevational patterns of diversity for plants and animals have been well established over
the past century. However, it is unclear whether there is a general elevational distribution …

Despite the paramount role of plant diversity for ecosystem functioning, biogeochemical
cycles, and human welfare, knowledge of its global distribution is still incomplete, hampering …

Plants, with an estimated 300,000 species, provide crucial primary production and
ecosystem structure. To date, our quantitative understanding of diversity gradients of …

The projected global increase in the distribution and prevalence of infectious diseases with
climate change suggests a pending societal crisis. The subject is increasingly attracting the …