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Science 6 October 2006:
Vol. 314. no. 5796, p. 13
DOI: 10.1126/science.314.5796.13c
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For most major groups of organisms, diversity decreases from the tropics to the poles, which may either reflect greater rates of speciation or of species persistence in the tropics. A large-scale analysis of the fossil record of marine bivalves by Jablonski et al. (p. 102; see the Perspective by Marshall) shows that the present-day latitudinal gradient in biodiversity reflects both higher originations in the tropics and pole-ward expansions of distributional limits of taxa over time. Thus, the tropics are both a cradle and a museum of biodiversity.




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)