美国康奈尔鸟类学实验室Eliot T. Miller研究组发现种间竞争限制了热带山区鸟类的活动范围。相关论文发表在2022年7月22日出版的《科学》杂志上。

他们使用来自 eBird 的超过 440 万份公民科学记录来定义每个地区的物种海拔范围，通过对 31 个山地区域内鸟类海拔范围大小的整体比较测试来检验这些假设的对比预测。他们发现强有力的证据表明，竞争而非气候是狭窄海拔范围的主要驱动力。这些结果强调了物种相互作用在塑造热带山区物种分布范围方面的重要性。

据了解，物种的地理范围受到气候和物种相互作用的限制，气候是物种只能生活在生物多样性丰富的热带山区狭窄海拔范围内问题的普遍解释，但竞争也可以限制物种的海拔范围。

附：英文原文

Title: Interspecific competition limits bird species’ ranges in tropical mountains

Author: Benjamin G. Freeman, Matthew Strimas-Mackey, Eliot T. Miller

Issue&Volume: 2022-07-22

Abstract: Species’ geographic ranges are limited by climate and species interactions. Climate is the prevailing explanation for why species live only within narrow elevational ranges in megadiverse biodiverse tropical mountains, but competition can also restrict species’ elevational ranges. We test contrasting predictions of these hypotheses by conducting a global comparative test of birds’ elevational range sizes within 31 montane regions, using more than 4.4 million citizen science records from eBird to define species’ elevational ranges in each region. We find strong support that competition, not climate, is the leading driver of narrow elevational ranges. These results highlight the importance of species interactions in shaping species’ ranges in tropical mountains, Earth’s hottest biodiversity hotspots.

DOI: abl7242

Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl7242