Global patterns in species richness have resisted explanation since they first caught the
attention of ecologists in the 1960s. The failure of ecology to fully integrate the diversity issue
into its core of accepted wisdom derives from an inappropriate concept of community and
the rejection of history and region as formative contexts for ecological systems. Traditionally,
ecologists have held that the pervasive relationship between species richness and
conditions of the physical environment reflects the influence of environment on the ability of …