Comment on "The latitudinal gradient in recent speciation and extinction rates of birds and mammals"

Weir and Schluter (Reports, 16 March 2007, p. 1574) used variation in the age distribution of sister species to estimate that recent rates of speciation decline toward the tropics. However, this conclusion may be undermined by taxonomic biases, sampling artifacts, and the sister-species method, all of which tend to underestimate diversification rates at low latitudes.     

Mid-oligocene extinction event in north american land mammals

Interest in extraterrestrial causes for the apparent 26-to 32-million-year periodicity of mass extinctions has focused on the terminal Eocene event and older events, although there is now evidence of a mid-Oligocene event near the early/late Oligocene boundary, or about 32.4 million years ago. An abrupt (200,000 years or less) mid-Oligocene extinction event appears in the record of North American land mammals, which results in the selective disappearance of archaic members of the fauna and later diversification of other taxa. The selective nature of the extinctions suggests climatic and ecological causes rather than an extraterrestrial catastrophe. Increased mid-Oligocene glaciation, worldwide cooling, a major regression event, and abrupt changes in the flora are probably the immediate causes, and these may have resulted from changes in global oceanic circulation.     

Laonastes and the "Lazarus effect" in recent mammals

The living Laotian rodent Laonastes aenigmamus, first described in early 2005, has been interpreted as the sole member of the new family Laonastidae on the basis of its distinctive morphology and apparent phylogenetic isolation from other living rodents. Here we show that Laonastes is actually a surviving member of the otherwise extinct rodent family Diatomyidae, known from early Oligocene to late Miocene sites in Pakistan, India, Thailand, China, and Japan. Laonastes is a particularly striking example of the "Lazarus effect" in Recent mammals, whereby a taxon that was formerly thought to be extinct is rediscovered in the extant biota, in this case after a temporal gap of roughly 11 million years.     

Out of the tropics: evolutionary dynamics of the latitudinal diversity gradient

The evolutionary dynamics underlying the latitudinal gradient in biodiversity have been controversial for over a century. Using a spatially explicit approach that incorporates not only origination and extinction but immigration, a global analysis of genera and subgenera of marine bivalves over the past 11 million years supports an "out of the tropics" model, in which taxa preferentially originate in the tropics and expand toward the poles without losing their tropical presence. The tropics are thus both a cradle and a museum of biodiversity, contrary to the conceptual dichotomy dominant since 1974; a tropical diversity crisis would thus have profound evolutionary effects at all latitudes.     

Modes of larval development and rates of speciation in early tertiary neogastropods

Although most warm-water molluscs have planktotrophic larval stages, some living families of tropical neogastropods are dominated by nonplanktotrophic development. Fossil protoconchs of early Tertiary neogastropods indicate that some families became progressively dominated by nonplanktotrophic development through time. This trend may be the result of higher speciation rates for nonplanktotrophs and a unidirectional trend in developmental change.     

On the regulation of populations of mammals, birds, fish, and insects

A key unresolved question in population ecology concerns the relationship between a population's size and its growth rate. We estimated this relationship for 1780 time series of mammals, birds, fish, and insects. We found that rates of population growth are high at low population densities but, contrary to previous predictions, decline rapidly with increasing population size and then flatten out, for all four taxa. This produces a strongly concave relationship between a population's growth rate and its size. These findings have fundamental implications for our understanding of animals' lives, suggesting in particular that many animals in these taxa will be found living at densities above the carrying capacity of their environments.     

Comparative losses of British butterflies, birds, and plants and the global extinction crisis

There is growing concern about increased population, regional, and global extinctions of species. A key question is whether extinction rates for one group of organisms are representative of other taxa. We present a comparison at the national scale of population and regional extinctions of birds, butterflies, and vascular plants from Britain in recent decades. Butterflies experienced the greatest net losses, disappearing on average from 13% of their previously occupied 10-kilometer squares. If insects elsewhere in the world are similarly sensitive, the known global extinction rates of vertebrate and plant species have an unrecorded parallel among the invertebrates, strengthening the hypothesis that the natural world is experiencing the sixth major extinction event in its history.     

The latitudinal distribution of clouds on Titan

Clouds have been observed recently on Titan, through the thick haze, using near-infrared spectroscopy and images near the south pole and in temperate regions near 40 degrees S. Recent telescope and Cassini orbiter observations are now providing an insight into cloud climatology. To study clouds, we have developed a general circulation model of Titan that includes cloud microphysics. We identify and explain the formation of several types of ethane and methane clouds, including south polar clouds and sporadic clouds in temperate regions and especially at 40 degrees in the summer hemisphere. The locations, frequencies, and composition of these cloud types are essentially explained by the large-scale circulation.     

黑龙江省近35年农业气象灾害受灾率变化特征

利用Mann-Kendall趋势检验法、Morlet小波分析方法和GIS软件分析,黑龙江省1980~2015年农业气象灾害数据。结果表明,1980~2015年,黑龙江省农业气象灾害受灾率呈降低趋势,且降低趋势在95%置信水平下显著;农业气象灾害在近35年内呈周期性震荡变化,受灾率变化主要时间尺度为18a。农业受灾率和受灾面积比重在黑龙江省空间分布规律基本一致,在同一纬度上,二者均从西向东呈递减趋势,在同一经度上,从南向北呈先增后减变化。农业气象灾害主要集中在黑龙江省西南部地区。     

High incidence of "leapfrog" pattern of geographic variation in andean birds: implications for the speciation process

Many species of birds in the humid forests of the Andes show a pattern of geographic variation in color that is virtually unknown in other regions of the world. This pattern, here termed "leapfrog," is one in which two populations very similar in appearance are geographically separated from each other by very different, intervening populations of the same species. Approximately 21 percent of all Andean bird species and superspecies with three or more differentiated populations show the leapfrog pattern, and several of these show multiple cases of leapfrogging color patterns. Lack of concordance in the geographic distribution of taxa showing the leapfrog pattern suggests that there is a strongly random component in phenotypic differentiation with respect to direction, geography, and timing.     

Comment on "On the regulation of populations of mammals, birds, fish, and insects" III

Stochasticity in time series explains concave responses of per capita growth rate to population size. The gradients with the natural log of population size have more biological importance because they measure strength of density compensation. Its weakening with increasing body size across taxa (Sibly et al., Reports, 22 July 2005, p. 607) is consistent with slower responses in ascent than descent toward carrying capacity. Time series therefore suggest that populations of large-bodied animals underfill their environments.     

Comment on "On the regulation of populations of mammals, birds, fish, and insects" I

Sibly et al. (Reports, 22 July 2005, p. 607) concluded that density dependence acts far below the carrying capacity in most animal populations. We argue that the authors confused discrete and continuous models, that their best-fit models cannot explain observed oscillations, and that their estimation procedures appear biased. They also neglected trophic and migratory processes, which we demonstrate could underlie their empirical findings.