Five palaeobiological laws needed to understand the evolution of the living biota
Five palaeobiological laws needed to understand the evolution of the living biota
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DOI：
10.1038/s41559-017-0165
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发表时间：
2017-06-01
影响因子：
16.8
通讯作者：
Marshall, Charles R.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Marshall, Charles R.
几个学科的基础可以用简单的量化定律来表示，例如牛顿定律或热力学定律。在这里，我提出了从化石数据中得出的五个定律，它们描述了物种灭绝和寿命、物种丰富度、起源速率、灭绝速率和多样性之间的关系。这些关于我们古生物知识的陈述构成了一个在研究活的生物群时很大程度上隐藏在视野中的维度，尽管如此，即使对于化石记录很差或根本不存在的群体来说，这对进化和生态学的研究也是至关重要的。这些定律概括了：物种灭绝的关键事实；物种在地质上通常是短暂的，因此灭绝物种的数量通常使现存物种的数量相形见绌；灭绝和起源的速度通常具有相似的幅度；以及，这种重大的灭绝使得仅从活着的生物群很难推断出一个支系的早期历史或当前的多样性动态。虽然在将这些核心古生物学发现整合到我们对活生物群的分析中取得了重要的进展，但如果我们要了解它们的进化动力学，这些知识需要更广泛地纳入其中。
The foundations of several disciplines can be expressed as simple quantitative laws, for example, Newton's laws or the laws of thermodynamics. Here I present five laws derived from fossil data that describe the relationships among species extinction and longevity, species richness, origination rates, extinction rates and diversification. These statements of our palaeobiological knowledge constitute a dimension largely hidden from view when studying the living biota, which are nonetheless crucial to the study of evolution and ecology even for groups with poor or non-existent fossil records. These laws encapsulate: the critical fact of extinction; that species are typically geologically short-lived, and thus that the number of extinct species typically dwarfs the number of living species; that extinction and origination rates typically have similar magnitudes; and, that significant extinction makes it difficult to infer much about a clade's early history or its current diversity dynamics from the living biota alone. Although important strides are being made to integrate these core palaeontological findings into our analysis of the living biota, this knowledge needs to be incorporated more widely if we are to understand their evolutionary dynamics.