major hypotheses that depend solely on the spatial and areal characteristics of the tropics. Mid-domain effect Using computer simulations, Cowell and Hurt (1994) and Willing and Lyons (1998) first pointed out that if species’ latitudinal ranges were randomly shuffled within the geometric constraints of a bounded biogeographical domain (e.g. the continents of the New World, for terrestrial species), species' ranges would tend to overlap more toward the center of the domain than towards its limits, forcing a mid-domain peak in species richness. Colwell and Lees (2000) called this stochastic phenomenon the mid-domain effect (MDE), presented several alternative analytical formulations for one-dimensional MDE (expanded by Connolly 2005), and suggested the hypothesis that MDE might contribute to the latitudinal gradient in species richness, together with other explanatory factors considered here, including climatic and historical ones. Because "pure" mid-domain models attempt to exclude any direct environmental or evolutionary influences on species richness, they have been claimed to be null models (Cowell et al. 2004, 2005). On this view, if latitudinal gradients of species richness were determined solely by MDE, observed richness patterns at the biogeographic level would not be distinguishable from patterns produced by random placement of observed ranges called dinosures(Colwell and Lees 2000). Others object that MDE models so far fail to exclude the role of the environment at the population level and in setting domain boundaries, and therefore cannot be considered null models (Hawkins and Diniz-Filho 2002; Hawkins et al. 2005; Zapata et al. 2003, 2005). Mid-domain effects have proven controversial (e.g. Jetz and Rahbek 2001, Koleff and Gaston 2001, Lees and Colwell, 2007, Romdal et al. 2005, Rahbek et al. 2007, Storch et al. 2006; Bokma and Monkkonen 2001, Diniz-Filho et al. 2002, Hawkins and Diniz-Filho 2002, Kerr et al. 2006, Currie and Kerr, 2007). While some studies have found evidence of a potential role for MDE in latitudinal gradients of species richness, particularly for wide-ranging species (e.g. Jetz and Rahbek 2001, Koleff and Gaston 2001, Lees and Colwell, 2007, Romdal et al. 2005, Rahbek et al. 2007, Storch et al. 2006; Dunn et al. 2007) others report little correspondence between predicted and observed latitudinal diversity patterns (Bokma and Monkkonen 2001, Currie and Kerr, 2007, Diniz-Filho et al. 2002, Hawkins and Diniz-Filho 2002, Kerr et al. 2006). Geographical area hypothesis Another spatial hypothesis is the geographical area hypothesis (Terborgh 1973). It asserts that the tropics are the largest biome and