Scientists researching tree frogs in the Amazon say they might have solved the question of why so many species are crammed into such small areas of rainforest.
For more than two hundred years, the question of why there are more species in the tropics has been a biological enigma. Now researchers say it’s less to do with the climate or geography, and more to do with how long these ecosystems have existed.
“The results suggest that the incredible biodiversity of amphibians in some sites in the Amazon Basin took more than 50 million years to develop,” say the scientists. “If the Amazon rainforests are destroyed and the amphibian species are driven to extinction by human activities in the next few decades, it may take tens of millions of years for this incredible level of biodiversity to ever return.”
Read more at Stony Brook University