In this chapter, the relative importance of climatic variability and dispersal
limitation on the distribution of endemic birds in mainland territorial region of China is
analyzed using inhomogeneous Poisson process models. Model comparison is
performed through Akaike Information Criteria (AIC). The results showed that, over the
42 species studied, climatic variability was more important than dispersal limitation for
explaining the spatial distributional patterns of 6 species. In contrast, the spatial
distribution of 10 species was better explained by the dispersal limitation mechanism.
Both climatic variability and dispersal limitation play equal roles on structuring the
spatial distributional record patterns of the remaining 26 endemic bird species. In
conclusion, different species responses climatic fluctuation in various ways and their
migration over neighboring regions may result into the diversified influence of dispersal
limitation and climatic variability. Dispersal limitation seems more important than
climatic variability on structuring the distribution of endemic taxa, at least for the
endemic birds of mainland China.
Keywords: Akaike Information Criteria, avian endemism, climatic niche, dispersal
limitation, distributional patterns, endemic species, homogeneous processes, model
comparison, niche versus neutrality, spatial ecology, spatial statistics.