Ecological Archives M078-001-A1

David J. Currie and Jeremy T. Kerr. 2008. Tests of the mid-domain hypothesis: A review of the evidence. Ecological Monographs 78:3–18.

Appendix A. Sources of data and notes used in the compilation of Table 1.

HORIZONTAL TRANSECTS AND GRIDS

Willig and Lyons (1998)
Marsupial data from Fig. 2a; entire New World as domain. Bat data from Fig. 3a.

Lees et al. (1999)
Data for all Mycalesine spp. on a latitudinal gradient are from Fig. 6.; Fig. 7 for elevational gradient. 2-D data for all species are from Fig. 11. We assumed that the observed values at each latitude order in the same way as the predicted. In cases where symbols overlapped at a given latitude such that it was not possible to pair predicted and observed data, we omitted all observations from that latitude. This occurred at 4 of 47 latitudes.

Bokma et al. (2001)
Data from Fig. 3a.

Jetz and Rahbek (2001)
1-D latitude:Fig. 1a; 1-D longitude:Fig. 1B; 2-D latitude: Fig. 1E; 2-D longitude: Fig. 1F.

Koleff and Gaston (2001)
Predicted values are taken from results shown for Model E. Parrots: Fig. 1a; woodpeckers: Fig. 1B.

Diniz-Filho et al. (2002)
Original data not shown. Statistics reported on p. 50.

Ellison (2002)
Data from Fig. 4.

Hawkins and Diniz-Filho (2002)
The statistics are taken from Table 1.

Jetz and Rahbek (2002)
Table S1 reports that n = 1738 and t = 19.76 for the non-spatial model. From this, one can calculate that R2=0.1836 for a regression including MDE model predictions as the sole independent variable.

Laurie and Silander (2002)
Data from Fig. 6B.

Connolly et al. (2003)
Data from Figs. 2A, B,C, D.

McCain (2003)
Data from Fig. 3A.

Rangel and Diniz-Filho (2003)
Original data not shown. Statistics reported on p. 206.

Aliabadian et al. (2005)
Original data not shown. Statistics reported on p. 21
.
Arita et al. (2005)
Data from Figs. 4a and 5a, data type 2.

Bellwood et al. (2005)
Original data not reported.

Ferrer-Castan and Vetaas (2005)
Orginal not shown. Conclusion taken from the Abstract.

Hernández et al (2005)
Data from Fig. 2.

Mora and Robertson (2005)
Data from Fig. 1a.

Romdal et al. (2005)
Data from Fig. 1a, using randomized empirical ranges (-RER). Analysis of the data from Fig. 1B, in which richness and the MDE prediction are both adjusted for area shows: Expected R2 = 0.39, observed R2 = 0.47, observed B  = 1.12, and the runs test has P  < 10–4.

Smith et al. (2005)
Data from Fig. 3. The predicted richness was assumed to be the median between the limits of the confidence limits. We always used the more narrowly define potential geographical domain for the animals. Using the broader domain would yield substantially poorer fit.

Kerr et al. (2006)
The data are those that were used to construct Figs. 4a (latitudinal transects) and 5.

Moreno et al. (2006)
Data from Fig. 2.

Storch et al. (2006)
Appropriate data are reported in Fig. 2b; however, the points form a solid cloud that could not be digitized. The authors’ conclusions about the results are reported instead.

Rahbek et al. (2007)
Statistics and significance tests are reported in Table 1.

VERTICAL TRANSECTS

Rahbek (1997)
Original data are not shown. The relevant results are reported at the bottom of p. 885.

Fleishman et al. (1998)
Original data are not shown. The relevant results are reported on p. 2487.
Pineda and Caswell 1998
Data are not shown. The relevant results are reported in the Abstract.

Lees et al. (1999)
Data from Fig. 7.

Kessler (2001)
Results of statistical tests reported in Table 1.

Grytnes and Vetaas (2002)
Original data not given. Conclusions taken from Abstract.

Sanders (2002)
Data from Fig. 1.

Smith and Brown (2002)
Original data not shown. Conclusion taken from Abstract.

Grytnes (2003)
Data not shown. Conclusion taken from Abstract.

Bachman et al. (2005)
Richness data are from Fig. 4a. Area data are from Fig. 2. Figure 3 shows that richness in equal-area bands in New Guinea peaks in the sixth of 15 bands. However, since area per band decreases more or less exponentially with elevation, the sixth equal-area band is at low elevation. The total area of the island (based on Fig. 2) is about 905000 km2. Fifteen equal area bands would each contain 60333 m2. The sixth band would therefore have a cumulative area of 301666 km2 below it, and 362000 km2 at its top. This is less than the area of the lowest band in Fig. 2 : the 0–500 m band has an area of 595000 km2. The relationship between log elevation and log cumulative area is approximately linear from 0–3000 m. A regression yields log(cumulative area) = 5.1915 + 0.2175 log(elevation), n = 6, R2 = 0.996, P < 10–5. From this, one can calculate that the sixth equal-area band extends approximately from 21 m to 48 m of elevation.

 

FigA1

 

McCain et al. (2004)
Data from Fig. 5a.

Carpenter (2005)
Original data not shown. Conclusion taken from the Abstract.

Herzog et al. (2005)
Data from Fig. 3c.

Krömer et al. (2005)
Predicted values not shown. Conclusion taken from the Abstract.

McCain (2005)
Meta-analysis; only the overall conclusions reported.

McClain and Etter (2005)
Data from Fig. 6, null model 5.

Mena and Vásquez-Dominguez (2005)
Original data not shown. Conclusion taken from Abstract.

Ooman and Shanker (2005)
Data from Fig. 3.

Alameida-Neto et al. (2006)
Data from Fig. 1d, the regional pattern.

Brehm et al. (2007)
Data from Fig. 3.

Cardelús et al. (2006)
Data from Fig. 6.
Cardelus et al. tested for the relationships between observed richness and both MDE-predicted richness and climatic variables. They did not, however, use any variable that accounts for a temperature × precipitation interaction (alternatives might include actual evapotranspiration or primary productivity). We repeated these analyses using the richness data from Cardelus et al. Figure 6 and the rainfall and temperature data in Cardelus et al. Table 1. We found that, in a multiple regression that includes rainfall and a temperature × rainfall interaction, both variables are significant, and together they explain more variance than the MDE prediction.

 

Model

P

Model R2

MDE prediction

0.014

0.81

Precip
Precip × Temp

0.009
0.020

0.94

MDE
Precip
Precip × Temp

0.25
0.70
0.97

0.97

 

In a model with both MDE and the climatic variables, the collinearity between climate and MDE is so strong that the marginal contribution of any of the three variables is nonsignificant. Sample sizes are too small (n = 6) to distinguish the effects of climate and MDE. Variance partitioning:

 

FigA3

 


Note that the same gradient was sampled in the studies of Watkins et al. (2006) and Brehm et al. (2007). Their richness gradients are just as strongly collinear with environment as those of Cardelús et al..

Dunn et al. (2006)
Data from Fig. 1, top panels.

Fu et al. (2006)
Data from Figs. 2a and 2b.

Jankowski and Weyhenmeyer (2006)
Data from Fig. 3, panels I and II.

Kendall and Haedrick (2006)
Data from Figs. 1–5.

Kluge et al (2006)
Data from Fig. 2a.

McCain (2007)
Meta-analysis.

Watkins et al. (2006)
Data from Fig. 6. The data are the same as those reported in Cardelús et al. (2006). This study also cannot distinguish between the richness-climate and the richness-MDE relationships because of very strong collinearity and very weak statistical power.

Brehm et al. (2007)
Data from Fig. 3b. The samples are taken from the same transect as in the studies of Watkins et al. (2006) and Cardelús et al. (2006). Similar analyses lead to similar conclusions: MDE predictions and the climatic gradient are too strongly collinear to distinguish between the two hypothesized influences on richness.

Model

P

Model R2

MDE prediction

0.014

0.92

Precip
Temp
Precip × Temp

0.01
0.04
0.02

0.99

MDE
Precip
Temp
Precip × Temp

0.58
0.31
0.23
0.27

0.99

 

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