BIODIVERSITY AND CLIMATE 181Fig. 1. The distribution of climate stations from Muller (1982) used in this study. Black circles represent
stations with complete non-avian tetrapod lists; grey circles represent those stations with only partial data.
series on the order of 30 years (typical of
'climate'). Consequently most stations are
located in large towns or cities that historically
occupy lowland sites. This bias closely mimics
the biases in the geological record that tend to
over-represent low-elevation environments.
Complete non-avian tetrapod faunal lists have
been assigned to 408 of these stations: Europe
(204); North America (143); southern Africa
(21); and Australia (40). Seventy-two lists from
South America and 18 lists from Arabia contain
mammal data only. Floral data (Little 1977)
have been assigned to the North American
stations, and the database also includes global
coverage for all palms (Uhl & Dransfield 1987),
turtles (Iverson 1992) and crocodilians (see
references in Markwick 1998a).
Faunal lists are assigned to each station by
overlaying climate station distributions onto
published species distribution maps (Hall &
Kelson 1959; Van der Brink 1967; Little 1977;
Arnold & Burton 1978; Cook 1984; Stebbins
1985; Uhl & Dransfield 1987; Branch 1988;
Bouchardy & Moutou 1989; Eisenberg 1989;
Table 1. Explanation of environmental variables used in this paper
Abbreviation
MAT
MART
CMM
WMM
Radiation
Cumulative T 0
CumulativeT 5
Anuual precipitation
P range
Months T 10 P 40
PET
Mean annual NDVI
NDVI 1SD
ExplanationMean annual temperature
Mean annual range of temperature
Coldest month mean temperature
Warmest month mean temperature
Incident solar radiation measured at surface
Sum of all degrees above 0°C ('degree months')
Sum of all degrees above 5°C ('degree months')
Mean annual precipitation
Mean annual range in precipitation
Number of months with mean temperatures greater than 10°C and
Precipitation greater than 40 mm
Potential evapotranspiration
Mean annual negative difference vegetation index: a satellite-based metric used
as a proxy for primary productivity
One standard deviation of mean monthly NDVI