Hemispheric asymmetries in biodiversity : a serious matter of ecology
; ; ; (2004-11)
The original publication is available at http://www.plosbiology.org
Article
Penguins have been receiving a lot of bad press lately. They are considered somehow counter, spare, strange. Unlike most plant and animal groups, they do not show a peak of species richness towards the equator and a decline towards the poles. This more conventional spatial pattern is conveniently known as the latitudinal diversity gradient because of the strong covariance of richness and other measures of biodiversity that it describes. It is one of the most venerable, well-documented, and controversial large-scale patterns in macroecology (Willig et al. 2003).