Robert J. Whittaker

Body mass–abundance relationships reveal uneven global energy distribution across body size classes in vertebrates The relationship between species body mass and abundance (MAR-SPP) is a fundamental feature of ecosystems, reflecting whether energy is accumulated in few large organisms or dispersed amongst several ...

Body mass–abundance relationships reveal uneven global energy distribution across body size classes in vertebrates biogeography.pensoft.net/articles.php...
Interesting article on species abundance vs body mass globally, just out this week

Revisiting Europe's temperate forests: Palaeoecological evidence for an herbivory-driven woodland-grassland mosaic biome Understanding the pre-Homo sapiens baseline of the temperate forest biome is crucial for interpreting present-day biodiversity patterns, ecosystem fun…

Super honoured to have contributed to this epic piece of work, lead masterfully by @szymon-czyzewski.bsky.social.

We review multiple lines of palaeoecological evidence to reassess vegetation structure over the last 23 million years:

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The role of the climate niche in repeated abrupt tree declines and ecotone dynamics in the Appalachian Mountains during the Holocene Forests in eastern North American did not achieve a stable composition during the Holocene. Both prolonged and abrupt shifts in the distributions of tree species were common. Studying the dynamics inv...

Next in our Frontiers roundup: Using Appalachian pollen records, Shuman et al. explore how the tree communities of the Holocene were formed by interactions between climate variation and species climate niches: doi.org/10.21425/fob...

Diverging responses of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic plant diversity to biogeographic parameters in arid habitat islands of southern Africa Habitat islands conceptually bridge true islands and habitat patches, adding new perspectives to island biogeographic principles that shape community assembly processes. Despite growing interest, empi...

Diverging responses of taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic plant diversity to biogeographic parameters in arid habitat islands of southern Africa biogeography.pensoft.net/articles.php...

new work on quartz habitat islands in Southern Africa

Towards the human-induced “eemification” of the recent Holocene: a perspective from the Canary Islands The ruling climate conditions during the Last Interglacial, the Eemian (ca. 130–120 ky BP), were warmer and, consequently, the sea level stood 8–10 m higher than today. Ongoing human-induced climate c...

Towards the human-induced “eemification” of the recent Holocene: a perspective from the Canary Islands biogeography.pensoft.net/articles.php...

Introducing the concept of Eemification - an interesting new perspective article just out today in Frontiers of Biogeography

The global island species–area relationship for plants | PNAS The island species−area relationship (ISAR) is known to be near-ubiquitous, but its properties across the fullest span of island areas globally and...

The global island species–area relationship for plants | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Our latest effort to understand ISARs for plants globally!

The New Phytologist Tansley Medal 2025 – Camille S. Delavaux Click on the article title to read more.

I am honored to have received the 2025 Tansley Medal @newphyt.bsky.social! Thank you to everyone who pushed, challenged, and supported me along the way to complete the underlying work.

Global biogeography of zoantharians indicates a weak genetic differentiation between the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific oceans, and distinct communities in tropical and temperate provinces Biogeographic patterns for marine fishes and scleractinian stony corals are well-established, but it is still unclear whether these patterns apply to the understudied marine invertebrates. Here we inv...

Two new papers to start your week! First, big distributions and little genetic divergence in the global biogeography of zoantharians: biogeography.pensoft.net/article/1742...

Cool new study testing changing balance of processes predicted by the general dynamic model of oceanic island biogeography

Digging Into the General Dynamic Model: How Island Ontogeny Shifts the Evolutionary Drivers of Lineage Divergence Aim The general dynamic model (GDM) of oceanic island biogeography proposes that evolutionary processes shift predictably with island ontogeny: opportunities for ecological speciation on young islan...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Phytoplankton regionalism in natural mesocosm-like wetlands of an island archipelago in the Aegean Sea Wetlands are globally recognised as biodiversity refugia and critical climate regulators, yet they are increasingly threatened by human pressures. Although phytoplankton plays a foundational role in a...

Phytoplankton regionalism in natural mesocosm-like wetlands of an island archipelago in the Aegean Sea biogeography.pensoft.net/articles.php...

Interesting concept of triple insularity

Small-island effect is detected for both native and non-native seed plants in the largest archipelago of China The small-island effect (SIE) describes a particular form of species–area relationship where species richness on small islands is independent of island area or relates to area in a different way than ...

Small-island effect is detected for both native and non-native seed plants in the largest archipelago of China - and shown for both species richness and phylogenetic diversity -https://biogeography.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=168932

Fish species composition reflects geomorphology in the Western Amazon, the Earth's vertebrate biodiversity hotspot Fishes of the Western Amazon exhibit the greatest diversity of any continental vertebrate fauna on Earth. Hypotheses to explain diversity patterns have focused on various ecological and evolutionary p...

Fish species composition reflects geomorphology in the Western Amazon, the Earth's vertebrate biodiversity hotspot biogeography.pensoft.net/articles.php...

Many congratulations to Mani !

It was great to be at The International Biogeography Society meeting in Aarhus last week. There is still more to say about the Species Area Relationship !