The ecological drivers of variation in global language diversity.

Clicks: 172
ID: 40525
2019
Article Quality & Performance Metrics
Overall Quality
Not rated
Combines reader engagement with the AI quality analysis. This article has not been analysed, so there is no overall score — reader engagement is measured and shown alongside.
AI Quality Assessment
Not analyzed
Readership in this journal
Steady

Ranked #366 of 485 articles by views in Nature communications

Most read Least read

Bar heights use a square-root scale. Only the 120 most-read articles are drawn; the journal has 485 in total.

Mint this article as an NFT
Not yet minted

Create a permanent, verifiable on-chain record of this article on the Scimatic Network. The NFT is held in your Journament account, and you can withdraw it to your own wallet at any time.

5 SUSD one-off · no wallet required
Sign in to mint
Abstract
Language diversity is distributed unevenly over the globe. Intriguingly, patterns of language diversity resemble biodiversity patterns, leading to suggestions that similar mechanisms may underlie both linguistic and biological diversification. Here we present the first global analysis of language diversity that compares the relative importance of two key ecological mechanisms - isolation and ecological risk - after correcting for spatial autocorrelation and phylogenetic non-independence. We find significant effects of climate on language diversity, consistent with the ecological risk hypothesis that areas of high year-round productivity lead to more languages by supporting human cultural groups with smaller distributions. Climate has a much stronger effect on language diversity than landscape features, such as altitudinal range and river density, which might contribute to isolation of cultural groups. The association between biodiversity and language diversity appears to be an incidental effect of their covariation with climate, rather than a causal link between the two.
Reference Key
hua2019thenature Use this key to autocite in the manuscript while using SciMatic Manuscript Manager or Thesis Manager
Authors Hua, Xia;Greenhill, Simon J;Cardillo, Marcel;Schneemann, Hilde;Bromham, Lindell;
Journal Nature communications
Year 2019
DOI
10.1038/s41467-019-09842-2
URL
Keywords Keywords not found

Citations

No citations found. To add a citation, contact the admin at info@scimatic.org

Comments

No comments yet. Be the first to comment on this article.