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New research about biodiversity accumulation in deep time reveals the importance of climate on ...
https://www.science.ku.dk/english/press/news/2019/new-research-about-biodiversity-accumulation-in-deep-time-reveals-the-importance-of-climate-on-todays-abundance-of-life/04 April 2019
New research about biodiversity accumulation in deep time reveals the importance of climate on today’s abundance of life
BIODIVERSITY
Natural history museum paleontologists in Copenhagen and Helsinki have succeeded in mapping historical biodiversity in unprecedented detail. For the first time, it is now possible to compare the impact of climate on global biodiversity in the distant past – a result that paints a gloomy picture for the preservation of present-day species richness. The study has just been published in the prestigious American journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/19/1821123116
The diversity of life on Earth is nearly unimaginable. There is such a wealth of organisms that we literally can’t count them all. Nevertheless, there is broad consensus that biodiversity is in decline and that Earth is in the midst of a sixth extinction event – most likely due to global warming. The sixth extinction event reflects the loss of plant and animal species that scientists believe we are now facing. It is an event that, with overwhelming probability, is caused by human activity.
Assistant Professor Christian Mac Ørum of the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen leads the groundbreaking study:
"One of the problems with the hypothesis of global warming is that it is difficult to predict what happens to ecosystems and biodiversity as the planet warms. By examining animals of the past and species adaptability, we can more accurately respond to the question of what leads to crises in ecosystems, and what happens thereafter. Thus far, it has been a big problem that some of the largest fluctuations in biodiversity through geological time have been exceptionally tough to grasp and accurately date. As such, it has been difficult to compare possible environmental impacts and their effects on biodiversity. Among other things, this is because climate change takes place quite abruptly, in a geological perspective. As previous calculations of biodiversity change in deep time have been based on a time-binning partitioning divided into 10 – 11 million year intervals, direct comparisons with climate impacts have not been possible. Our new biodiversity curves provide unprecedentedly high temporal resolution, allowing us to take a very large step towards the understanding and coherence of climate-related and environmental impacts on overall biodiversity – both in relation to species development and extinction event intervals,” explains Christian Mac Ørum.
…
"The studies we have been engaged with for over four years have, for the first time, made it possible to compare developments related to biodiversity with climate change, for example. We are now able to see that precisely when ocean temperature fell to its current level, there was also a dramatic increase in biodiversity. This suggests that a cooler climate – but not too cold – is very important for conserving biodiversity. Furthermore, we find that the very large extinction event at the end of the Ordovician period (485 – 443 million years ago), when upwards of 85% of all species disappeared, was not "a brief ice age" – as previously believed – but rather a several million years long crisis interval with mass extinctions. It was most likely prompted by increased volcanic activity. It took nearly 40 million years to rectify the mess before biodiversity was on a par with levels prior to this period of volcanic caused death and destruction," emphasizes Christian Mac Ørum.
…
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1821123116New research about biodiversity accumulation in deep time reveals the importance of climate on today’s abundance of life
BIODIVERSITY
Natural history museum paleontologists in Copenhagen and Helsinki have succeeded in mapping historical biodiversity in unprecedented detail. For the first time, it is now possible to compare the impact of climate on global biodiversity in the distant past – a result that paints a gloomy picture for the preservation of present-day species richness. The study has just been published in the prestigious American journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/19/1821123116
The diversity of life on Earth is nearly unimaginable. There is such a wealth of organisms that we literally can’t count them all. Nevertheless, there is broad consensus that biodiversity is in decline and that Earth is in the midst of a sixth extinction event – most likely due to global warming. The sixth extinction event reflects the loss of plant and animal species that scientists believe we are now facing. It is an event that, with overwhelming probability, is caused by human activity.
Assistant Professor Christian Mac Ørum of the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen leads the groundbreaking study:
"One of the problems with the hypothesis of global warming is that it is difficult to predict what happens to ecosystems and biodiversity as the planet warms. By examining animals of the past and species adaptability, we can more accurately respond to the question of what leads to crises in ecosystems, and what happens thereafter. Thus far, it has been a big problem that some of the largest fluctuations in biodiversity through geological time have been exceptionally tough to grasp and accurately date. As such, it has been difficult to compare possible environmental impacts and their effects on biodiversity. Among other things, this is because climate change takes place quite abruptly, in a geological perspective. As previous calculations of biodiversity change in deep time have been based on a time-binning partitioning divided into 10 – 11 million year intervals, direct comparisons with climate impacts have not been possible. Our new biodiversity curves provide unprecedentedly high temporal resolution, allowing us to take a very large step towards the understanding and coherence of climate-related and environmental impacts on overall biodiversity – both in relation to species development and extinction event intervals,” explains Christian Mac Ørum.
…
"The studies we have been engaged with for over four years have, for the first time, made it possible to compare developments related to biodiversity with climate change, for example. We are now able to see that precisely when ocean temperature fell to its current level, there was also a dramatic increase in biodiversity. This suggests that a cooler climate – but not too cold – is very important for conserving biodiversity. Furthermore, we find that the very large extinction event at the end of the Ordovician period (485 – 443 million years ago), when upwards of 85% of all species disappeared, was not "a brief ice age" – as previously believed – but rather a several million years long crisis interval with mass extinctions. It was most likely prompted by increased volcanic activity. It took nearly 40 million years to rectify the mess before biodiversity was on a par with levels prior to this period of volcanic caused death and destruction," emphasizes Christian Mac Ørum.
…
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