Global forest network cracks the case of tropical biodiversity

[rangerrebew]

Global forest network cracks the case of tropical biodiversity
June 29, 2017
Is this the long-sought answer to the question of tropical biodiversity?
 

If aliens sent an exploratory mission to Earth, one of the first things they'd notice—after the fluffy white clouds and blue oceans of our water world—would be the way vegetation grades from exuberance at the equator through moderation at mid-latitudes toward monotony at higher ones. We all learn about this biodiversity gradient in school, but why does it exist?

Even Charles Darwin wondered. Though the pattern is striking, it is difficult to explain. Since it is global in scale, the initial tendency was to suspect long-term or large-scale mechanisms, such as climate stability (no glaciers in the tropics), rates of speciation (higher in the tropics) or rates of extinction (lower in the tropics according to the fossil record).


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-long-sought-tropical-biodiversity.html#jCp

[Joe Wooten]

I think there is a very simple explanation - there is more energy available in the tropics for plant life and therefore more opportunity for different species to co-exist. More energy means generally more water too. as you go north and south of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, the amount of available solar input falls off, and therefore plant diversity falls off.