Nature & Environment

Planet Warming Increases Biodiversity on Earth

Brooke Miller
First Posted: Sep 04, 2012 05:20 PM EDT

A new study conducted by the researchers from the University of York, Glasgow and Leeds have contradicted the previous assumptions that warm periods result in excess extinction of species.

According to this study that analyzed the fossils and the geological records for the past 540 million years state that warmer planets definitely boosts the biodiversity on Earth.

Though according to the researchers the evolution of new species accompanied by the extinction of existing species is what triggers the increase in biodiversity.

According to the researchers, "The present trends of increasing temperature are unlikely to boost global biodiversity in the short term because of the long timescales necessary for new forms to evolve. Instead, the speed of current change is expected to cause diversity loss."

The Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) carry this new finding.  In this journal it is stated that warm periods in past led to increased extinction and rise of new species thereby causing the overall biodiversity to enhance.

"The reason for the about-face is that the earlier work measured fossil diversity by tallying the first and last appearances of each group of species, then assuming that the creatures existed only during the intervening years. This might sound logical, but overlooks the fact that some geological periods are better studied than others," Mayhew, an evolutionary ecologist at the University of York, UK, was quoted in Nature.

This new study definitely resolves the illogicality of the earlier study that looked at the biodiversity at the same time and dealt with insufficient data. They came up with a conclusion that a warming climate reduces the overall diversity. But for this study the researchers re-examined patterns of marine invertebrate biodiversity over the last 540 million years with the help of improved data.

Lead author, Dr Peter Mayhew, of the Department of Biology at York, said: "The improved data give us a more secure picture of the impact of warmer temperatures on marine biodiversity and they show that, as before, there is more extinction and origination in warm geological periods. But, overall, warm climates seem to boost biodiversity in the very long run, rather than reducing it."

Dr Alistair McGowan, of the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow said: "The previous findings always seemed paradoxical. Ecological studies show that species richness consistently increases towards the Equator, where it is warm, yet the relationship between biodiversity and temperature through time appeared to be the opposite. Our new results reverse these conclusions and bring them into line with the ecological pattern."

Professor Tim Benton, of the Faculty of Biological Sciences at the University of Leeds, added: "Science progresses by constantly re-examining conclusions in the light of better data. Our results seem to show that temperature improves biodiversity through time as well as across space. However, they do not suggest that current global warming is good for existing species. Increases in global diversity take millions of years, and in the meantime we expect extinctions to occur."

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