Geologically active continents will produce higher biodiversity

One might think that all tropical rainforests have the same diversity due to their stable warm and humid climate and geographical location near the equator, but this is not the case
.
Compared with South America and Southeast Asia, the number of species in the humid tropical forests of Africa is much lower for many biological groups

Rare palm trees

Researchers call this uneven distribution the Pan-tropical Diversity Difference (PDD).
A good example is palm trees: out of the 2500 types of palm trees in the world, 1,200 are distributed in Southeast Asia, and 800 are distributed in Southeast Asia.
Tropical rain forests in South America, but only 66 species are distributed in tropical rain forests in Africa
.

Why is this happening, biodiversity researchers have been arguing
.
There is evidence that the current climate is responsible for the low species diversity of African tropical forests

Other evidence suggests that the different environmental and tectonic histories of these three tropical forest regions have affected different levels of biodiversity for tens of millions of years
.
These environmental changes include, for example, the formation of mountains, islands or arid and desert areas

However, it is difficult to distinguish the two factors of current climate and environmental history
.

Mountain architecture brings diversity

Under the leadership of Lo?c Pellissier, professor of landscape ecology, researchers at ETH Zurich are studying this problem with the help of a new computer model that allows them to simulate the diversity of species over millions of years of evolution..
They concluded that the current climate is not the main reason for the decline in biodiversity in the African rainforest

"Our model confirms that differences in paleoenvironmental dynamics caused the uneven distribution of biodiversity, rather than current climate factors," Pellissier said
.
"Geological processes and global temperature fluctuations determine the time and location of the emergence or extinction of species

One factor is particularly important for the high biodiversity of a continent: geodynamics

Geologically active continents produce higher biodiversity

The "gen3sis" model developed by ETH researchers has only recently been published in the journal "Public Library of Science Biology"
.
This is a mechanism model in which major constraints such as geology and climate are expressed together with biological mechanisms, and the biodiversity model is thus realized

"With these four basic rules, we can simulate the population dynamics of organisms under constantly changing environmental conditions and provide a good explanation for how organisms are produced," Pelicher said
.

By establishing models based on these basic evolutionary mechanisms, researchers can simulate species diversity without inputting data (distribution) for each species
.
However, the model needs to consider continental geodynamic data, as well as humidity and temperature data for climate reconstruction

Researchers are currently improving models and conducting simulations to understand the emergence of biodiversity in other species-rich areas, such as the mountainous areas in western China
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The model code and paleo-environment reconstruction are open source
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All interested evolution and biodiversity researchers can use it to study the formation of biodiversity in different parts of the world
.

Journal Reference :

1. Oskar Hagen, Benjamin Flück, Fabian Fopp, Juliano S.
   Cabral, Florian Hartig, Mikael Pontarp, Thiago F.
   Rangel, Loïc Pellissier.
   gen3sis: A general engine for eco-evolutionary simulations of the processes that shape Earth’s biodiversity .
   PLOS Biology , 2021; 19 (7): e3001340 DOI: 10.
   1371/journal.
   pbio.
   3001340