Long-term relationships between ecological stability and biodiversity in Phanerozoic reefs

Ecology: the long view Greater biodiversity is known to enhance ecological stability in small plots of land, and over intervals from weeks to decades. But for the link between diversity and stability to achieve significance for ecologists, it must be shown to occur over a wide area and long periods. A new study of ancient coral reefs shows that diversity–stability relationships leave traces over geological timescales and can be scaled up to millions of years and globally. The changing taxonomic diversity in reef ecosystems as preserved in the fossil record shows that the higher the mean reef diversity in a given ten-million-year time interval, the smaller the change in reef ecology in the succeeding interval. Reefs are less likely to change if they yield a greater number of species — but this could also mean that today's diverse reefs may not be able to adapt quickly to global change.