Agriculture rivals biomes in predicting global species richness

• DOI: 10.1111/ecog.02508
• Publication Date: 2016-08-23T13:07:51Z
• Authors: Laura Kehoe; Cornelius Senf; Carsten Meyer; Katharina Gerstner; Holger Kreft; Tobias Kuemmerle
• Keywords: Biome; Land Cover

Species–area relationships (SARs) provide an avenue to model patterns of species richness and have recently been shown vary substantially across regions different climate, vegetation, land cover. Given that a large proportion the globe has converted agriculture, considering variety in agricultural management practices, key question is whether global SARs gradients intensity. We developed for mammals account geographic variation biomes, cover range land‐use intensity indicators representing inputs (e.g. fertilizer, irrigation), outputs yields) system‐level measures human appropriation net primary productivity – HANPP). systematically compared resulting terms their predictive ability. Our SAR with universal slope was significantly improved by inclusion any one three variable types: cover, The latter, form (HANPP), performed as well biomes land‐cover predicting richness. Other had lower main finding performs emphasizes factors are on par environmental biodiversity. While our broad‐scale study cannot establish causality, activity known drive at local scale, findings suggest this may hold true scale. ability explain scale not previously assessed. suggests models allows us better predict understand patterns.