Aim Global warming increasingly threatens marine fish, but environmental drivers of coastal fish biodiversity and fish trait responses to these drivers remain unclear, hindering understanding of biodiversity–environment relationships. This study disentangled direct/indirect effects of environmental factors on coastal China Seas fish communities and identified trait responses to these drivers. Location China Seas. Methods Piece...

Aim Climate is widely understood to determine elevational patterns of soil microbial communities, whereas the effects of parental material are uncertain. Changes in the composition of parental materials along elevational transects could also affect soil microbial communities by influencing soil pH and nutrient availability. Here, we aim to illustrate the combined effects of climate and parental material on the biomass and comp...

Aim The equator‐to‐poles decline in the number of species, namely the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG), is the most conspicuous pattern in biology, yet the underlying mechanisms of this pattern remain controversial. Species dispersal could have strong effects on large‐scale species distributions but has rarely been considered in understanding the LDG. Here we sought to examine how dispersal ability may influence the latitu...

Aim Mycorrhiza play key roles for ecosystem structure and functioning in forests. However, how different mycorrhizal types influence mountain forest biodiversity–ecosystem functioning (BEF) relationships are largely unknown. We evaluate how the diversity of distinct mycorrhiza‐associated fungi and trees shapes forest carbon storage along elevational gradients. Location Gaoligong Mountains within Hengduan Mountains, Southwest C...

Aim The Sino‐Japanese Floristic Region has extremely high species diversity with respect to temperate plants; however, the reasons for this diversity are poorly understood because most studies have only considered geographic isolation caused by climatic oscillations. In some plant groups, high floral trait diversity and uneven species diversity between insular systems and the continental area suggest other factors may have imp...

Aim Pleistocene climate and associated environmental changes have influenced phylogeographic patterns of many species. These not only depend on a species’ life history but also vary regionally. Consequently, populations of widespread species that occur in several biomes might display different evolutionary trajectories. We aimed to identify regional drivers of diversification in the common pheasant, a widely distributed ecolog...

Aim The mechanisms driving forest community assembly along elevational gradients remain elusive. The distinct strata in heterogeneous forest are subject to differing assembly mechanisms. This study aims to evaluate how different ecological mechanisms driving forest community assembly across strata and spatial scales, and to identify how these assemblages respond to different abiotic or biotic variables along an elevational gra...

Aim Oceanic currents are among the most pervasive hydrodynamic features in shaping community dynamics, population connectivity and phylogeographical structure of intertidal species. Here, we test whether population structure and biogeographical gradients of genetic diversity in the brown alga Sargassum thunbergii are correlated with oceanic currents in the north‐west Pacific ( NWP ). Location North‐west Pacific (25.07°N–43.36°...

Aim We examined the biogeographical divergence, population‐level genetic differentiation and historical genetic exchange of the red macroalga Palmaria palmata in order to test whether populations on opposite sides of the North Atlantic underwent different demographic histories. Location North Atlantic rocky intertidal zones between c . 42 and 65° N. Methods We compiled mitochondrial (mt DNA ) cox 2–3 and plastid rpl 12– rps 31...

Aim The goals of our study were to assess the population history and genetic structure of the widespread bat H ipposideros armiger , and to evaluate the effect of palaeoclimatic changes and dispersal patterns on this species. Location S outh C hina, mainland S outheast A sia and the S outh H imalayas. Methods We amplified two mitochondrial DNA (mt DNA ) regions (cyt b and D ‐loop) and seven nuclear microsatellite loci (n SSR s...

Aim Most species of temperate regions are believed to have shifted to lower latitudes or elevations during the glacial periods of the Quaternary. In this study we test whether this phylogeographic assumption is also true for the plateau zokor ( Eospalax baileyi ), a fossorial rodent endemic to the climate‐sensitive Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau (QTP), which ranges in elevation from 2600 to 4600 m. Location The QTP of western China....