E-Mail
IMAGE: A map illustrating the occurrence of mollusks in marine shelf environments between 1700 and 2020, with darker hexagons indicating fewer and lighter indicating more. By compiling and analyzing mollusk fossil...
view more
Credit: Adapted from figure in Current Biology / Cell Press
The bulging, equator-belted midsection of Earth currently teems with a greater diversity of life than anywhere else -- a biodiversity that generally wanes when moving from the tropics to the mid-latitudes and the mid-latitudes to the poles.
As well-accepted as that gradient is, though, ecologists continue to grapple with the primary reasons for it. New research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Yale University and Stanford University suggests that temperature can largely explain why the greatest variety of aquatic life resides in the tropics -- but also why it has not always and, amid record-fast global warming, soon may not again.