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Testing The Peninsula Effect: Does It Affect Freshwater Crustaceans Inhabiting Ephemeral Wetlands On Florida's Ridges?, Debra Rinne

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The peninsula effect is a pattern of diversity wherein species richness decreases along a peninsula from base to tip and is attributed to three mechanisms: historical processes, habitat gradients, and immigration-extinction equilibrium. Numerous studies have reported conflicting results involving the existence, cause, and validity of the peninsula effect in part because they did not account for effects of history or habitat on species richness patterns and because most previous research focused on organisms that actively disperse, which could confound results with behavioral habitat selection. Florida poses an excellent opportunity to study the peninsula effect because of its geological history and …