Understanding the forces that shape biodiversity is essential for improving our ability to predict the responses of ecosystems to rapid, ongoing environmental change. In the Arctic, herbivores often play a key role in the functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. The diversity of herbivores varies across the Arctic, and until now, no one knew whether this was shaped by physical environmental factors, like temperature, or biotic factors, such as plant productivity.
We collected information on the distribution of all 73 species of vertebrate herbivores that occur in the Arctic. Vertebrate herbivores are particularly important as they affect the structure and dynamics of plant communities and provide food for higher trophic-level predators. The results of this study showed that herbivore diversity in the Arctic is higher in areas with greater plant productivity and with higher diversity of predators. The interactions between plants, herbivores and predators, occurred over large spatial scales across the Arctic, in ecosystems where patterns of biodiversity were supposed to be affected mainly by temperature variation.
Reference: Barrio, I.C., Bueno, C.G., Gartzia, M., Soininen, E.M., Christie, K.S., Speed, J.D., Ravolainen, V.T., Forbes, B.C., Gauthier, G., Horstkotte, T., Hoset, K.S., Høye, T.T., Jónsdóttir, I.S., Lévesque, E., Mörsdorf, M.A., Olofsson, J., Wookey, P.A. and Hik, D.S. (2016) Biotic interactions mediate patterns of herbivore diversity in the Arctic. Global Ecology and Biogeography
25(9):1108-1118