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Vol. 47 No. 2, 2008
Spatial Patterns of Terrestrial Vertebrate Species Richness in the Brazilian Cerrado
José
Alexandre F. Diniz-Filho1,*, Luis Mauricio Bini1, Cleiber Marques
Vieira2,3, Daniel Blamires2,4, Levi Carina Terribile5, Rogério Pereira
Bastos1, Guilherme de Oliveira6, and Bruno de Souza Barreto6
1Laboratório
de Ecologia Teórica e Síntese Universidade Federal de Goiás,
Departamento de Biologia Geral, ICB I, C.P. 131, 74001-970, Goiânia,
GO, Brasil
2Doutorado em Ciências Ambientais
(CIAMB), Universidade Federal de Goiás, Campus II - Samambaia, C.P.
131, 74001-970, Goiânia, GO, Brasil
3Universidade Estadual de Goiás, Unidade Universitária de Anápolis, Goiás, Brasil
4Universidade Estadual de Goiás, Unidade Universitária de Quirinópolis, Goiás, Brasil
5Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biologia Animal, Universidade de Brasilia, Brasília-DF, Brasil
6Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ecologia & Evolução, Universidade Federal de Goiás, ICB I, Goiânia, GO, Brasil
José Alexandre F. Diniz-Filho, Luis Mauricio Bini, Cleiber Marques
Vieira, Daniel Blamires, Levi Carina Terribile, Rogério Pereira Bastos,
Guilherme de Oliveira, and Bruno de Souza Barreto (2008) In
this paper, we used a“deconstruction”approach to evaluate the spatial
patterns of species richness of terrestrial vertebrates in the
Brazilian Cerrado. Six environmental variables as well as the
human population size and number of inventories were used as predictors
of species richness (the last 2 to account for variable sampling
efforts). Moran,s I coefficients revealed strong spatial
autocorrelations in ordinary least-squares multiple regression
residuals, and thus spatial filtering by eigenfunction maps, based on a
Gabriel network for the Cerrrado grid system, was used to evaluate the
influence of richness predictors, thereby minimizing statistical
problems caused by spatial autocorrelations. Models generated for
the species richness of each group were compared and showed that
spatial patterns of richness for all groups tended to be relatively
well explained by climatic variations, in terms of the energy-water
balance. Effects of productivity also appeared as a secondary
effect for all groups but mammals. Richness patterns in
amphibians and reptiles may have been biased by a lack of precise
faunal knowledge, although they were not explained by the usual
surrogates of the human population size and number of inventories.
Key words: Climatic effects, Autocorrelation, Human knowledge, Spatial patterns, Terrestrial vertebrates.
*Correspondence: E-mail:diniz@icb.ufg.br
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