Publication Date:
2016-03-26
Description:
The climatic variability hypothesis posits that the magnitude of climatic variability increases with latitude, elevation, or both, and that greater variability selects for organisms with broader temperature tolerances, enabling them to be geographically widespread. We tested this classical hypothesis for the elevational range sizes of more than 16,500 terrestrial vertebrates on 180 montane gradients. In support of the hypothesis, mean elevational range size was positively correlated with the scope of seasonal temperature variation, whereas elevational range size was negatively correlated with daily temperature variation among gradients. In accordance with a previous life history model and our extended versions of it, our findings indicate that physiological specialization may be favored under shorter-term climatic variability.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Chan, Wei-Ping -- Chen, I-Ching -- Colwell, Robert K -- Liu, Wei-Chung -- Huang, Cho-Ying -- Shen, Sheng-Feng -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2016 Mar 25;351(6280):1437-9. doi: 10.1126/science.aab4119.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan. ; Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan. Department of Life Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 70101, Taiwan. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269, USA. University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. Departmento de Ecologia, Universidade Federal de Goias, CP 131, 74.001-970 Goiania, Goias, Brazil. ; Institute of Statistical Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan. ; Department of Geography, National Taiwan University, Taipei 10617, Taiwan. ; Biodiversity Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan. shensf@sinica.edu.tw.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27013729" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Climate
;
*Global Warming
;
*Seasons
;
*Temperature
;
Vertebrates/*physiology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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