Tropics Both Create and Protect Diversity

"It's a really striking, surprising pattern," said lead author David Jablonski, professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago.

"And it appears that other animals and plants were playing the same game, even on land," now that previous studies are looked at with new eyes, he said in a statement.

"I think we've killed the idea that the tropics are either a cradle or a museum of biodiversity. They're both," said co-author James Valentine, professor emeritus of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley.

"The tropics are the engine for global biodiversity," added co-author Kaustuv Roy, associate professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego. "What this means is that human-caused extinctions in the tropics will eventually start to affect the biological diversity in the temperate and high latitudes. This is not going to be apparent in the next 50 years, but it will be a long-term consequence."

The report adds "a new wrinkle" to understanding evolutionary dynamics, commented Charles R. Marshall of Harvard University, in a perspective on the report. Marshall was not part of the research team.

The research was supported by grant from NASA.