Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3AN, UK.
School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.
Curr Biol. 2021 Oct 11;31(19):R1225-R1236. doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.07.071.
The fossil record is the primary source of information on how biodiversity has varied in deep time, providing unique insight on the long-term dynamics of diversification and their drivers. However, interpretations of fossil record diversity patterns have been much debated, with a traditional focus on global diversity through time. Problems arise because the fossil record is spatially and temporally patchy, so 'global' diversity estimates actually represent the summed diversity across a set of geographically and environmentally distinct regions that vary substantially in number and identity through time. Furthermore, a focus on global diversity lumps the signal of ecological drivers at local and regional scales with the signal of global-scale processes, including variation in the distribution of environments and in provincialism (the extent of subdivision into distinct biogeographic regions). These signals cannot be untangled by studying global diversity measures alone. These conceptual and empirical concerns necessitate a shift away from the study of 'biodiversity through time' and towards the study of 'biodiversity across time and space'. Spatially explicit investigations, including analyses of local- and regional-scale datasets, are central to achieving this and allow analysis of geographic scale, location and the environmental parameters directly experienced by organisms. So far, research in this area has revealed the stability of species richness variation among environments through time, and the potential climatic and Earth-system drivers of changing biodiversity. Ultimately, this research program promises to address key questions regarding the assembly of biodiversity, and the contributions of local-, regional- and global-scale processes to the diversification of life on Earth.
化石记录是了解生物多样性在远古时期如何变化的主要信息来源，为长期多样化动态及其驱动因素提供了独特的见解。然而，对化石记录多样性模式的解释一直存在很大争议，传统上关注的是随时间变化的全球多样性。出现问题的原因是化石记录在空间和时间上是零散的，因此“全球”多样性估计实际上代表了在一组在数量和身份上随时间变化很大的地理和环境上不同的区域的总和多样性。此外，对全球多样性的关注将局部和区域尺度的生态驱动因素的信号与全球尺度过程的信号（包括环境分布和特有性的变化）混为一谈，特有性是指划分为不同生物地理区域的程度。这些信号不能仅通过研究全球多样性措施来理清。这些概念和经验上的关注需要从研究“随时间变化的生物多样性”转向研究“跨越时间和空间的生物多样性”。空间显式调查，包括对局部和区域尺度数据集的分析，是实现这一目标的核心，允许分析地理尺度、位置以及生物体直接经历的环境参数。到目前为止，该领域的研究揭示了物种丰富度随时间在环境中的稳定性，以及气候变化和地球系统对生物多样性变化的潜在驱动因素。最终，这项研究计划有望解决有关生物多样性组装以及局部、区域和全球尺度过程对地球上生命多样化的贡献的关键问题。
