Drivers and Predictors of Global Biodiversity

This chapter considers the driving factors that may cause global patterns of biodiversity to exist. The goal is to confront published hypotheses about putative drivers of diversity with comprehensive empirical information on the environmental predictors of diversity on land and in the oceans. It argues that the diversity of life on land is primarily related to the availability of ambient energy, measured as temperature or potential evapotranspiration (PET), in combination with sufficient moisture, habitat area, and complexity. Thus, there is a fundamental similarity between primary correlates of diversity on land and in the sea, considering similar primacy of ambient energy and habitat as leading predictors of species richness.