Humboldt’s enigma: What causes global patterns of mountain biodiversity?

By C. Rahbek, M. Borregaard, Robert K. Colwell, B. Dalsgaard, Ben G. Holt, N. Morueta‐Holme, D. Nogués-Bravo, Robert J. Whittaker, J. Fjeldså. Science, 2019

833 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Mountains contribute disproportionately to the terrestrial biodiversity of Earth, especially in the tropics, where they host hotspots of extraordinary and puzzling richness. With about 25% of all land area, mountain regions are home to more than 85% of the world’s species of amphibians, birds, and mammals, many entirely restricted to mountains. Biodiversity varies markedly among these regions. Together with the extreme species richness of some tropical mountains, this variation has proven challenging to explain under traditional climatic hypotheses. However, the complex climatic characteristics of rugged mountain regions differ fundamentally from those of lowland regions, likely playing a key role in generating and maintaining diversity. With ongoing global changes in climate and land use, the role of mountains as refugia for biodiversity may well come under threat.

Subfields: Ecological Modeling, Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Nature and Landscape Conservation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4dd3d6e56f8a0e090422bc742f0b04e7921383e6

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Citations in the corpus

Building mountain biodiversity: Geological and evolutionary processes (2019, background): “For example, while the Andes region is, in itself, the most biodiverse region on Earth, Andean orogeny is also considered a key driver for the build-up of biodiversity across all of South America (13).”