Aim Along elevational or latitudinal gradients, the dynamics of mutualistic interactions may be driven by shifts in partner abundance, themselves driven by changes in environmental factors. We test the hypothesis that partner abundance mediates the frequency of associations and investment incurred by partners while associating. Location Western and Eastern slopes of the Andes of Ecuador. Taxon Ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae) an...

Global biodiversity is organised into biogeographic regions that comprise distinct biotas. The contemporary factors maintaining differences in species composition between regions are poorly understood. Given evidence that populations with sufficient genetic variation can adapt to fill new habitats, it is surprising that more homogenisation of species assemblages across regions has not occurred. Theory suggests that expansion a...

Aim Islands have been the test bed of several theories in community ecology, biogeography, and evolutionary biology. Progress within these disciplines has given a more comprehensive and mechanistic understanding of the processes governing variation in species richness among islands. However, it remains unclear whether these same processes also explain variation in species and phylogenetic composition among islands. Integrating...

Aim Identifying the underlying drivers of species’ distributional dynamics is critical for predicting change and managing biological diversity. While anthropogenic factors such as climate change can affect species distributions through time, other naturally occurring ecological processes can also have an influence. Theory predicts that interactions between species can influence distributional dynamics, yet empirical evidence r...

Aim To evaluate how environment and evolutionary history interact to influence global patterns of mammal trait diversity (a combination of 14 morphological and life‐history traits). Location The global terrestrial environment. Taxon Terrestrial mammals. Methods We calculated patterns of spatial turnover for mammalian traits and phylogenetic lineages using the mean nearest taxon distance. We then used a variance partitioning ap...

Aim We aimed to assess the relative influence of the historical and contemporary processes determining global patterns of current β‐diversity. Specifically, we quantified the relative effects of contemporary climate and historical plate tectonics on β‐diversity at different phylogenetic scales. Location Global. Time Period Contemporaneous. Major taxa studied Mammals and birds. Methods We analysed the current β‐diversity patter...

What forces structure ecological assemblages? A key limitation to general insights about assemblage structure is the availability of data that are collected at a small spatial grain (local assemblages) and a large spatial extent (global coverage). Here, we present published and unpublished data from 51 ,388 ant abundance and occurrence records of more than 2,693 species and 7,953 morphospecies from local assemblages collected...

We present a framework to measure the strength of environmental filtering and disequilibrium of the species composition of a local community across time, relative to past, current, and future climates. We demonstrate the framework by measuring the impact of climate change on New World forests, integrating data for climate niches of more than 14 000 species, community composition of 471 New World forest plots, and observed clim...

Aim Islands and archipelagos have played an important role in the development of ecological and evolutionary theories. Using a newly compiled molecular phylogeny we infer the biogeographical history of a monarch flycatcher genus, M yiagra , which is distributed across the Indo‐Pacific. We subsequently integrate biogeographical and ecomorphological data to examine the role of dispersal and trait evolution in the build‐up of avi...

Aim Water–energy dynamics are often correlated with geographical patterns of terrestrial plant richness. However, the relative importance of water and energy on species richness is still being debated. Some studies suggest a transition in the relative importance of water and energy along a latitudinal gradient, i.e. that water is the most important factor at low latitudes, whereas energy is the leading factor at high latitudes...

Invasive species displace native species and potentially alter the structure and function of ecological communities. In this study, we compared the generic composition of intact and invaded ant communities from 12 published studies and found that invasive ant species alter the phylogenetic structure of native ant communities. Intact ant communities were phylogenetically evenly dispersed, suggesting that competition structures...

Although many taxa show a latitudinal gradient in richness, the relationship between latitude and species richness is often asymmetrical between the northern and southern hemispheres. Here we examine the latitudinal pattern of species richness across 1003 local ant assemblages. We find latitudinal asymmetry, with southern hemisphere sites being more diverse than northern hemisphere sites. Most of this asymmetry could be explai...

Aim This research aims to understand the factors that shape elevational diversity gradients and how those factors vary with spatial grain. Specifically, we test the predictions of the species–productivity hypothesis, species–temperature hypothesis, the metabolic theory of ecology and the mid‐domain effects null model. We also examine how the effects of productivity and temperature on richness depend on spatial grain. Location...