Global tetrapod species richness map (Marin et al. 2018).
Drs. Behm and Helmus have a new paper out in Proceedings of the Royal Society B titled “Evolutionary time drives global tetrapod diversity.” Led by Julie Marin with co-authors from the Center for Biodiversity and several partner institutions, the researchers found that evolutionary time — or the length of time species have had to diversify — was the primary driver of tetrapod species richness. Using a dataset that included 84% of described tetrapod species, the authors tested multiple competing hypotheses on what influences tetrapod diversity. Download the paper on our publications page to read about their exciting findings!