Contrasting spatial patterns of taxonomic and functional richness offer insights into potential loss of ecosystem services.

ABSTRACT: Functional and trophic perspectives on patterns of species occurrences have the potential to offer new and interesting insights into a range of spatially explicit problems in ecology and conservation. We present the function-area relationship (FAR) and explore linkages between functional and taxonomic species richness for South African birds. We first used beak morphology to classify a subset of 151 South African bird species into 18 functional groups and calculated both the species-area relationship and the FAR at quarter-degree resolution for South Africa. The relationship between functional and taxonomic richness by cell was quadratic rather than linear, with considerable scatter around the curve. We next looked at the spatial relationships between taxonomic diversity and response diver

SUBMITTER: Cumming GS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2685431 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature