The Earth's Tropical Beginnings


	The Earth's Tropical Beginnings

haraya

10-9-2006 1:18 PM

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tags:

earth, life, science, biology, diversity, tropics, research

haraya says:

"When you start hurting the tropics, you are cutting off the source of species for other places."

--Stuart Pimm, an evolutionary biologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina

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<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://www.clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/69b4f42b-9c6a-45dd-99a7-815fb0296fa7/BD8DCD92-4DC3-4C6B-82E3-4A4872E62F69/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/1006/2?rss=1" href="http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/1006/2?rss=1" style="font-size: 11px;">sciencenow.sciencemag.org</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/1006/2?rss=1"><DIV class="PhotoWithCaption">
<IMG width="190" height="214" class="Photo" alt="Picture%20of%20bivalve" src="http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/content/vol2006/issue1006/images/2006100621.jpg" />
            <P><STRONG>Sailing the seas. </STRONG><BR /> Many bivalves, such as this oyster, first appeared in tropical zones before dispersing elsewhere.</p> <P>Credit: Eugene Weber/CalPhotos</p> </DIV></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2006/1006/2?rss=1"><P></p> In the tropics, which wrap around swaths of nearly every continent, animal and plant diversity is abundant, and it declines as one moves toward the North and South poles. Why this difference? Many evolutionary biologists favor one of two explanations: Either the tropics are where most new species originate, or species are less likely to go extinct there than elsewhere. New research suggests that both are true. The finding indicates that the tropics drive biodiversity and that extinctions there may have especially devastating effects.</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/BD8DCD92-4DC3-4C6B-82E3-4A4872E62F69/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>