Nothing Has Yet Lasted Forever: Current and Threatened Levels of Biological and Cultural Diversity

Scientists have yet to develop a comprehensive explanation as to why certain areas are more biologically diverse than others. The distribution of diversity is strongly influenced by historical, evolutionary, and environmental factors. The large amount of information available for humans allows assessment of within-species diversity patterns of human cultures across the landscape. A study is described in which the number of languages was adopted as a proxy for cultural diversity. The project then compared the within-species biodiversity pattern for humans to that of Passeriform birds, across species. Analyses at a coarse resolution indicated spatial concordance between the two large regions in Central and South America. Observed relationships weaken at finer scales of analysis.