Ocean and coastal ecosystems support life on Earth and many aspects of human well-being.
Covering two-thirds of the planet, the ocean hosts vast biodiversity and modulates the global …

The geographic ranges of marine organisms, including planktonic foraminifera, diatoms,
dinoflagellates, copepods and fish, are shifting polewards owing to anthropogenic climate …

The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) describes the pattern of increasing numbers of
species from the poles to the equator. Although recognized for over 200 years, the …

Global biodiversity currently peaks at the equator and decreases toward the poles. Growing
fossil evidence suggest this hump-shaped latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) has not been …

Many of the most dramatic patterns in biological diversity are created by “Perfect Storms”—
rare combinations of mutually reinforcing factors that push origination, extinction, or diversity …

Abstract In 1974, G. Ledyard Stebbins provided a metaphor illustrating how spatial gradients
of biodiversity observed today are by-products of the way environment-population …

Abstract Aim The Late Cenozoic flourishing of polar marine ecosystems, just when
temperatures were reaching their lowest levels, has always seemed anomalous. Such an …

Understanding the complex patterns of latitudinal diversity gradients (LDGs) in deep time
has been hampered by the absence of long-term records of LDGs through multiple climatic …

Modular evolution, the relatively independent evolution of body parts, may promote high
morphological disparity in a clade. Conversely, integrated evolution via stronger covariation …

A major climate shift took place about 40 Myr ago—the Middle Eocene Climatic Optimum or
MECO—triggered by a significant rise of atmospheric CO2 concentrations. The biotic …