Mammalian Macroecology in Latin America Pablo A. Marquet P. Universidad Católica de Chile Departamento de Ecología Casilla 114-D, Santiago Chile

EMPHASIS Mostly terrestrial, non-volant mammals South America, Latin America, Neotropics GOALS Provide an overview of the kind of macroecological patterns so far documented for mammals

Macroecology (a working definition) Macroecology is a research program that aims to discover the general principles or natural laws underlying the complexity of ecological systems. To some extent it proposes a complementary view to the experimental reductionistic approaches that have dominated ecology, emphasizing, but not restricted to, the analysis of large scale statistical patterns in the distribution and abundance of species at the interface several scientific disciplines, especially physiology, ecology, biogeography, and evolution.

Patterns in abundance Patterns in distribution Patterns in body size

Patterns in abundance Region habitat slopeintercept n Source SA & CA (0.64) Damuth (1987) NA (0.66) “ NEOTR. fo T (0.38) Damuth (1993) NEOTR. Io T (0.40) “ NEOTR. my T (0.75) “ NEOTR. T (0.45) “ Table.1. Selected analysisi reporting the relationship between abundance and Body size in Norh and South American mammals. T= tropical, fo=frugivore-ommnivores, Io= Insectivore-ommnivore, my =Myrmecophagous.

Patterns in abundance Abundance decreases with body mass Species at higher trophic levels tend to occur at lower densities than primary consumers. Within the Americas mammalian species in tropical areas tend to occur at lower densities than extra-tropical species. This pattern have been shown to hold for Africa, Australia and worldwide (Currie & Fritz 1993, Fa & Purvis 1997, Johnson 1998).

Patterns in distribution The number of species is not uniformly distributed across South America. There is a consistent pattern of an increase in species richness as we go from the poles to tropical latitudes. This pattern hold at the species as well as at macrotaxonomic levels (orders, families, and genera). (Willig and Sandlin 1989, Willig and Selcer 19889, Ruggiero 1994, Kaufman 1995, Willig and Gannon 1997, Kaufman and Willig 1998, Willig and Lyons 1998, Lyons and Willig 1999)

Patterns in distribution The relationship between richness and latitude is nonlinear, with several groups of species such as marsupials, edentates, carnivores, artiodactyls and hystricognath rodents, reaching maximum richness in subtropical areas. (e.g., Ruggiero 1994, Willig and Gannon 1997). Latitude, but not area, is the best explanatory variable of the patterns (e.g., Kaufman 1995, Kaufman and Willig 1998, Lyons and Willig 1999).

Patterns in distribution The size of species’ geographic ranges vary with latitude. Geographic ranges tend to be smaller at tropical latitudes (Rapoport’s rule) (Ropoport 1975, 1982; Anderson and Koopman 1981, Stevens 1989) This patterns holds for some taxonomic groups (bats, primates carnivora) but not for others (edentates, artiodactyls, hystricognath rodents) (Ruggiero 1994) Restricted range specie cluster around coastal and Andean areas (Ruggiero 1994, Ruggiero et al. 1998)

Mammalian species in South American Biomes (Udvardy 1975)

4567 Log Biome Area Number of species Threatened Endemic Total

Patterns in body size Body size distributions are highly modal and right skewed

There is a strong historical signal apparent in the shape of the distribution, which is related to the origin of taxa (Marquet and Cofre 1999, Oikos).

Mexico Conabio-Arita Mapping effort currently underway or already implemented in Latin America.

CHILE -NDVI & Elevation: -Pp & Tmp: -Habitat heterog.: Gajardo (1994). (Samaniego et al.) Chilean biodiversity mapping Abiotic data incorporated 0.5x0.5 degree grid

Number of species

Latitudinal Patterns

(Villagran & Hinojosa 1997) Latitudinal patterns in Chilean tree, shrub, and vines species richness