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Biodiversity's ups and downs

Natural ecosystems are devilishly difficult to study. Hence the resort to laboratory simulations, involving short-lived organisms like bacteria, to tackle the question of why some ecosystems support more species than others.

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Figure 1: Contrasts in species richness.

KLEIN/HUBERT-BIOS/STILL JOHANN SCHUMACHER/STILL

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Correspondence to Peter J. Morin.

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Morin, P. Biodiversity's ups and downs. Nature 406, 463–464 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1038/35020160

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