We've known this for centuries, but the explanation is not simple.
It's one of the oldest questions tackled by naturalists: Why do tropical regions have so much biodiversity compared with other areas of the globe?
The second hypothesis is that the tropics are much older environments that haven't been interrupted by big freezes, so species have had a longer time to evolve. Most of today's biodiversity has been developing over the past 200 million years, but it has been affected by multiple ice ages. The expansions and contractions of the polar ice sheets"completely remove life from the northernmost [and southernmost] areas," Dobson said.
However, although the tropics have a high rate of speciation , these balmy regions also have a high rate of species extinction. High rates of speciation can lead to smaller populations of species, in which many species are interacting or in competition in a small area, leaving them at a higher risk of extinction.
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