Environmental heterogeneity is an important spatial characteristic, the loss of which is thought to reduce biodiversity by decreasing the availability of niche space. The temporal dimension of the environmental heterogeneity-biodiversity relationship remains largely unexplored despite the increasing focus on anthropogenic change in ecology. To address this gap, we review peer-reviewed published studies to propose a first typology for the temporal dynamics associated with the terrestrial environmental heterogeneity-biodiversity relationship. We found a paucity of studies that address temporality, after filtering, just 23 papers met our search criteria. We propose three key temporal domains that require further research: short-term dynamics, long-term trajectories, and interactions with the spatial grain of observation which are essential for understanding biodiversity responses to environmental change.
Gent et al. (Fri,) studied this question.