Why are there so many Bird Species in the Tropics?

May 11, 2021

Location: via ZOOM lecture
Address: 3261 Gordon Drive
Time: 7:00pm - 8:30pm
Website: View Website

2021-05-11 19:00:00 2021-05-11 20:30:00 America/Vancouver Why are there so many Bird Species in the Tropics? Speaker: Jason Weir (via ZOOM) Why do the tropics harbour so many bird species? The 19th century explorer Alfred Russel Wallace believed that low extinction rates in the relatively benign climates of the tropics had allowed for the gradual buildup of high species richness there, while high extinction rates at high latitudes prevented such a buildup. Others have instead argued that evolution occurs faster in the tropics than at high latitudes, resulting in more species being produced near the equator than toward the poles. Here I tackle this question by estimating whether the rates at which new species form and perish vary with latitude. My key finding is that species evolve most rapidly where diversity is low. Canada, not the Amazon is the hotbed of evolutionary divergence. ason spent most of his childhood years roaming the Okanagan where he fell in love with birds at the age of 12. He did his PhD at University of British Columbia with Dolph Schluter, and he completed a Post Doc with Trevor Price at the University of Chicago. He is now a professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He and his students study rates of evolution in boreal birds from Canada, and tropical birds from Amazonian Brazil. (Website: http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~jweir/ ) via ZOOM lecture 3261 Gordon Drive events@kelownanow.com
Speaker: Jason Weir (via ZOOM)
Why do the tropics harbour so many bird species? The 19th century explorer Alfred Russel Wallace believed that low extinction rates in the relatively benign climates of the tropics had allowed for the gradual buildup of high species richness there, while high extinction rates at high latitudes prevented such a buildup. Others have instead argued that evolution occurs faster in the tropics than at high latitudes, resulting in more species being produced near the equator than toward the poles. Here I tackle this question by estimating whether the rates at which new species form and perish vary with latitude. My key finding is that species evolve most rapidly where diversity is low. Canada, not the Amazon is the hotbed of evolutionary divergence.
ason spent most of his childhood years roaming the Okanagan where he fell in love with birds at the age of 12. He did his PhD at University of British Columbia with Dolph Schluter, and he completed a Post Doc with Trevor Price at the University of Chicago. He is now a professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He and his students study rates of evolution in boreal birds from Canada, and tropical birds from Amazonian Brazil. (Website: http://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/~jweir/ )