New Delhi:
According to a new study, fossils resembling miniaturised popcorn that date back millions of years provide the first statistical evidence that number of species on Earth depends on how the environment changes. Research conducted at University of Southampton in UK shows that environmental changes put a cap on species richness. This was based on analysing the fossil record of microscopic aquatic creatures called planktonic foraminifera.
“While the idea of infinite species on a finite Earth is clearly fanciful, the relevance of upper limits to diversity is still a fractious debate amongst evolutionary biologists, ecologists and palaeontologists,” said Thomas Ezard, from the University of Southampton. “We are the first to show statistically that this upper limit is environmentally dependent,” Ezard said.
However, previous researches have focused on either biological, climate change or geological explanations, this new research examined the co-dependence of these factors on how species interact.
The outcome of the research showed that the world is full of species, but that the precise fullness varies through time as environment changes.
The study was published in the journal Ecology Letters.
