Low predictive power of mid-domain effect to explain geographic species richness patterns in Palearctic songbirds

In the study of diversity patterns, the Mid-domain effect (MDE), which explains gradients in diversity solely on the basis of geo-metric constraints, has emerged as a null-model against which other hypotheses can be tested. The effectiveness, measured by its predictive power, of these MDE models appears to depend on the size of the study area and the range-sizes of the taxa consid-ered. Here we test the predictive power of MDE on the species richness patterns of birds and assess its effectiveness for a vari-ety of species range sizes. We digitised distribution maps of 889 species of songbird endemic to the Palearctic, and analysed the emergent biogeographic patterns with WORLDMAP software. MDE had a predictive power of 20 % when all songbirds were included. Major hotspots were located south of the area where MDE predicted the highest species-richness, and some of th