Journal
TRENDS IN ECOLOGY & EVOLUTION
Volume 29, Issue 1, Pages 42-50Publisher
ELSEVIER SCIENCE LONDON
DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2013.09.012
Keywords
biogeography; climate; dinosaurs; greenhouse; icehouse; phanerozoic; seasonality
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Funding
- Imperial College London Junior Research Fellowship
- Leverhulme Trust [RPG-129]
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Today, biodiversity decreases from equatorial to polar regions. This is a fundamental pattern governing the distribution of extant organisms, the understanding of which is critical to predicting climatically driven biodiversity loss. However, its causes remain unresolved. The fossil record offers a unique perspective on the evolution of this latitudinal biodiversity gradient (LBG), Providing a dynamic system in which to explore spatiotemporal diversity fluctuations. Deep-time studies indicate that a tropical peak and poleward decline in species diversity has not been a persistent pattern throughout the Phanerozoic, but is restricted to intervals of the Palaeozoic and the past 30 million years. A tropical peak might characterise cold icehouse climatic regimes, whereas warmer greenhouse regimes display temperate diversity peaks or flattened gradients.
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