A new study, by scientists from the Universities of York,
Glasgow and Leeds, involving analysis of fossil and geological records going
back 540 million years, suggests that biodiversity on Earth generally increases
as the planet warms.
But the research says that the increase in biodiversity
depends on the evolution of new species over millions of years, and is normally
accompanied by extinctions of existing species. The researchers suggest that
present trends of increasing temperature are unlikely to boost global
biodiversity in the short term because of the long timescales necessary for new
forms to evolve. Instead, the speed of current change is expected to cause
diversity loss.