Precipitation and large herbivorous mammals I: estimates from present-day communities

Question: How can mammalian community characteristics be used to estimate regional precipitation? Data: Global distribution data of large mammals and their ecomorphology; global climate data. Research methods: Non-linear regression-tree analysis and linear regression. Conclusions: The methods unravelled the complex relationships between the environment and the characteristics of mammalian communities. The regression trees described here provide a reasonably accurate estimate of precipitation values for today's world. The strongest correlations are for annual precipitation versus diet (R super(2) = 0.665), precipitation versus tooth crown height (R super(2) = 0.658), and precipitation versus diet and tooth crown height combined (R super(2) = 0.742).