Primate populations worldwide are experiencing rapid declines due to habitat loss, degradation, and overexploitation. These pressures are particularly severe across sub-Saharan Africa and the Gulf of Guinea biodiversity hotspot, which supports several threatened and endemic species. The Ebo-Makombe-Ndokbou forests in southwestern Cameroon contain critical habitat for several of these species, including the Critically Endangere...

Aim It has been proposed that species diversity (SD) and genetic diversity (GD) co‐vary across natural communities because both are shaped by processes such as immigration and drift. However, empirical reports are contradictory, and multispecies studies are rare. Here we test the hypothesis that the two diversity measures do not correlate in systems with high levels of immigration stochasticity and little GD caused by strong g...

Understanding product circularity as “three‐dimensional” could anchor the Circular Economy to common principles while affording its followers flexibility about how to measure it in their specific sectors and disciplines and within their organization's means. Inspired by a heuristic developed for the urban planning profession to cope with the inherent conflicts of Sustainable Development, this article argues that measuring prod...

Aim Local richness is a result of both regional richness and local site‐specific factors. We quantify the effects of different regional (dispersal, environmental filtering) and local (habitat selection) community assembly processes in the Cape reeds (Restionaceae) of the Cape flora and test if community assembly processes vary spatially. Location Southern Africa, Cape Floristic Region. Taxon Angiosperms, African Restionaceae (...

Aim I test whether species range size variation is driven by the age of the species, their intrinsic traits, environment or by historical‐geographical patterns (e.g. the location of climatic or environmental refugia). Location Greater Cape Floristic Region (GCFR) of South Africa. Taxon Angiosperms, Restionaceae (restios). Methods I determined the area of occupancy and extent of occurrence of all restios in the GCFR, and derive...

Aim Fragmented distributions should show immigration and diversification dynamics consistent with the predictions of island biogeography theory. We test whether this applies to the fragmented Cape fynbos vegetation. Location Southern Africa, Cape Floristic Region (CFR). Taxon Angiosperms, Restionaceae (restios). Methods We used a large occurrence dataset and environmental layers to characterize an existing regionalization and...

Aim Tropical mountains around the world harbour an extraordinarily rich pool of plant species and are hotspots of biodiversity. Climatically, they can be zoned into montane climates at mid‐altitudes and tropical alpine climates above the tree line. Around half of the tropical alpine species belong to plant lineages with a temperate ancestry, although these regions are often geographically distant. We test the hypothesis that t...

Aim Insect distribution patterns can result from historical contingency (biogeography and dispersal limitation), abiotic filtering and biotic factors (ecological interactions and evolutionary associations). Here, we analyse turnover of plant and insect herbivore community composition at multiple spatial scales to tease apart these influences. While positive associations between plant and insect turnover across broad spatial sc...

Models predicting ecosystem carbon dioxide ( CO 2 ) exchange under future climate change rely on relatively few real‐world tests of their assumptions and outputs. Here, we demonstrate a rapid and cost‐effective method to estimate CO 2 exchange from intact vegetation patches under varying atmospheric CO 2 concentrations . We find that net ecosystem CO 2 uptake ( NEE ) in a boreal forest rose linearly by 4.7 ± 0.2% of the curren...

Aim Ecologically driven diversification can create spectacular diversity in both species numbers and form. However, the prediction that the match between intrinsic (e.g. functional trait) and extrinsic (e.g. climatic niche) variables may lead to evolutionary radiation has not been critically tested. Here, we test this hypothesis in the Southern Hemisphere plant family Proteaceae, which shows a spectacular diversity in open med...

Rising atmospheric [CO 2 ], c a , is expected to affect stomatal regulation of leaf gas‐exchange of woody plants, thus influencing energy fluxes as well as carbon (C), water, and nutrient cycling of forests. Researchers have proposed various strategies for stomatal regulation of leaf gas‐exchange that include maintaining a constant leaf internal [CO 2 ], c i , a constant drawdown in CO 2 ( c a − c i ), and a constant c i / c a...

Aim We test whether the modern regionalization of the angiosperm flora is the result of C enozoic barriers to dispersal. Location Global. Methods We used a database of C enozoic woody angiosperm fossils to build a matrix of family and genus occurrence at 11 continents/regions for five time periods of the C enozoic, thus defining 55 floras. We used ordinations and cluster analyses to infer the relationships among these floras....

Aim Four factors (time, dispersal, extinction and speciation) shape the differences in species richness within a clade between two regions. The southern African summer‐rainfall ‘Highveld’ is less species rich than the adjacent winter‐rainfall ‘Greater Cape Floristic Region’. In many clades, this may be the result of a Cape origin of these temperate clades, with later dispersal to the cool uplands of the Highveld. We explored a...

Aim Our aim was to seek explanations for the differences in the diversity among the austral continents by comparing the diversification rates and patterns in the grass subfamily Danthonioideae. We asked specifically whether diversification is density dependent, whether it is different for each continent, and whether immigration rates impact on diversification rates. We attempted to account for intercontinental differences by c...

Much attention has been paid to the effects of climate change on species' range reductions and extinctions. There is however surprisingly little information on how climate change driven threat may impact the tree of life and result in loss of phylogenetic diversity ( PD ). Some plant families and mammalian orders reveal nonrandom extinction patterns, but many other plant families do not. Do these discrepancies reflect differen...

Aim We sought to understand the variables that limit the distribution range of a clade (here the danthonioid grasses). We tested time, area of origin, habitat suitability, disjunction width and nature, and wind direction as possible range determinants. Location Global, but predominantly the Southern Hemisphere. Methods We mapped the range of the subfamily Danthonioideae, and used 39,000 locality records and an ensemble modelli...

Aim To evaluate the evolutionary dynamics of the ecological niche by quantifying the modes and rates of ecological niche evolution (with a particular focus on climatic parameters) and species diversification. Location Greater C ape Floristic Region, southern A frica. Methods Using the genus B abiana ( I ridaceae) from the C ape flora, S outh A frica, we study the evolutionary dynamics of the ecological niche, which includes a...

The ability of species to modulate environmental conditions and resources has long been of interest. In the past three decades the impacts of these biotic modifiers have been investigated as ‘ecosystem engineers’, ‘niche constructors’, ‘facilitators’ and ‘keystone species’. This environmental modulation can vary spatially from extremely local to global, temporally from days to geological time, and taxonomically from a few to a...