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MACROEVOLUTION

Reined-in richness

Nature Ecology & Evolution volume 3, pages 520–521 (2019)Cite this article

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Analysis of Phanerozoic vertebrate community richness suggests there have been constraints on tetrapod diversity dynamics over much of their evolutionary history.

Is there a limit to the number of species our planet can accommodate? If so, has it changed over life’s deep history? Earlier research into the history of life’s diversity found patterns of increasing richness over hundreds of millions of years, suggesting that today’s global ecosystems hold more species than ever before1,2. Such sustained diversification implied that evolution’s potential to generate new species is boundless, accomplished through the continual expansion and subdivision of ecological niches. The trend was interrupted only by the occasional mass extinction that cleaned house, temporarily resetting the standing crop before evolution’s ratchet kicked back in. In this issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution, however, Close et al.3 report a more constrained pattern for tetrapod diversity dynamics over the last 375 million years, echoing dynamics that have also been observed in marine invertebrates4.

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Fig. 1: New approaches to counting fossil taxa are changing the picture of biodiversity over Earth’s history.

Matt Celesky (right panel, leftmost image; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/); Raven Amos (right panel, centre image; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/); Mercedes Yrayzoz (vectorized by T. Michael Keesey) (right panel, rightmost image; http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth Sciences, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Linda C. Ivany

  2. Department of Environmental and Forest Biology, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Jesse Czekanski-Moir

Authors
  1. Linda C. Ivany
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  2. Jesse Czekanski-Moir
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Linda C. Ivany or Jesse Czekanski-Moir.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Ivany, L.C., Czekanski-Moir, J. Reined-in richness. Nat Ecol Evol 3, 520–521 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0863-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-019-0863-9

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