Perfect storms shape biodiversity in time and space

Abstract

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 accommodation to extremes. These patterns include the strongest diversification events (e.g. the Cambrian Explosion of animal body plans), the proliferation of hyperdiverse clades (e.g. insects, angiosperms), the richest biodiversity hotspots (e.g. the New World Tropical Montane regions and the ocean's greatest diversity pump, the tropical West Pacific), and the most severe extinction events (e.g. the Big Five mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic). Human impacts on the modern biota are also a Perfect Storm, and both mitigation and restoration strategies should be framed accordingly, drawing on biodiversity's responses to multi-driver processes in the geologic past. This approach necessarily weighs contributing factors, identifying their often non-linear and time-dependent interactions, instead of searching for unitary causes.