Biodiv Sci ›› 2000, Vol. 08 ›› Issue (3): 325-336.  DOI: 10.17520/biods.2000047

Special Issue: 物种形成与系统进化

• 论文 • Previous Articles     Next Articles

How does species diversity change? Spatio-temporal patterns and scales

ZHOU Hong-Zhang, YU Xiao-Dong, LUO Tian-Hong, HE Jun-Jian   

  1. Institute of Zoology , Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing  100080
  • Received:1999-09-01 Revised:1999-12-23 Online:2000-08-20 Published:2000-08-20
  • Contact: ZHOU Hong-Zhang

Abstract: It is an important part of biodiversity research to discover the patterns of species diversity over space and time in different scales and to find the mechanisms that control thepattern forming. These are also considered to be the main goals of studies on species diversity , which lay special emphasis on how the number of species changes and how great the species diverse with different biological attributes. This paper discusses at first the spatial patterns of species diversity , especially the modes of“species-area”from different aspects. The factors like latitudinal changes and habitat heterogeneity are considered to see how they affect the pattern forming of species diversity. Secondly , the paper′s discussion is concentrated on the patterns of species diversity over time. In the long- term evolution of all organisms , the process of total species- diversity increase would be interrupted by a series of mass extinctions that occur periodically. The recent progresses show that the patterns of species diversity between any two mass extinctions would be determined by the initial status immediately after the former mass extinction. On short- time scales , e.g. ecological succession in a community , circannual rhythms and seasonality , some special patterns have been found in species- diversity changes. In addition , the results of some researches demonstrated that more species tended to live on a host if they had coevolved for a longer time.