Biodiversity devastation: Human-driven decline requires millions of years of recovery
A new study shows that the current rate of biodiversity decline in freshwater ecosystems outcompetes that at the end-Cretaceous extinction that killed the dinosaurs: damage now being done in decades to centuries may take millions of years to undo.
The current biodiversity crisis, often called the 6th mass extinction, is one of the critical challenges we face in the 21st century. Numerous species are threatened with extinction, mostly as a direct or indirect consequence of human impact. Habitat destruction, climate change, overexploitation, pollution and invasive species are among the main causes for Earth's biota to decline rapidly.
To investigate the tempo of extinction and predict recovery times, an international team of evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, geologists and modelers led by the Justus Liebig University Giessen compared today's crisis with the previous, 5th mass extinction event. That event was the result of an asteroid impact 66 million years ago, eradicating about 76% of all species on the planet, including entire animal groups such as the dinosaurs. Focusing on freshwater biota, which are among the World's most threatened, the research team gathered a large dataset containing 3,387 fossil and living snail species of Europe covering the past 200 million years. The scientists estimated rates of speciation and extinction to assess the speed at which species come and go and predict recovery times.
The results of the study, which are recently published in the journal END
The current biodiversity crisis, often called the 6th mass extinction, is one of the critical challenges we face in the 21st century. Numerous species are threatened with extinction, mostly as a direct or indirect consequence of human impact. Habitat destruction, climate change, overexploitation, pollution and invasive species are among the main causes for Earth's biota to decline rapidly.
To investigate the tempo of extinction and predict recovery times, an international team of evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, geologists and modelers led by the Justus Liebig University Giessen compared today's crisis with the previous, 5th mass extinction event. That event was the result of an asteroid impact 66 million years ago, eradicating about 76% of all species on the planet, including entire animal groups such as the dinosaurs. Focusing on freshwater biota, which are among the World's most threatened, the research team gathered a large dataset containing 3,387 fossil and living snail species of Europe covering the past 200 million years. The scientists estimated rates of speciation and extinction to assess the speed at which species come and go and predict recovery times.
The results of the study, which are recently published in the journal END