Life on Earth is complex and hard to understand, but new research may have finally given us a much-needed glimpse into the patterns that life follows as it spreads across our planet. According to a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, researchers believe life has a hidden rule that it has to follow, and the signs of that rule can be found in every bioregion across our planet.
This rule, the researchers claim in their new paper, could help us explain why no matter how different every environment on our planet is, every bioregion seems to follow the same design. It could also help us better understand how the ecosystems around the world respond to environmental changes like global warming.
Just looking at life on Earth as a whole, it’s easy to see the oceans and other natural barriers as end points for the patterns that drive life. However, researchers say they have found evidence of life’s hidden rule in multiple regions, no matter how far apart they are. No matter what the region is, or what the environment is, they say that life always follows the same pattern.
For starters, life seems to radiate from a single core area in each bioregion. Then, other parts of life like animals or plants will spread out from that core. Some thrive while others don’t. It seems, the researchers write, that these core areas provide the optimal conditions needed for species to survive and diversify. From there, the rest of the region’s biodiversity radiates outward.
This new research supports previous findings that small areas play a disproportionate ecological role in sustaining the biodiversity found in different bioregions. It also could help us with conservation efforts, which often require finding the best place to put a species so it can thrive under human protection. Additionally, this evidence seems to show that life’s hidden rule is indeed true.
It plays into a previous theory that there are plausible mechanisms that drive the patterns life follows. While we might not know exactly how life on Earth started, we’re slowly learning more about how it grew to be the massive, global phenomenon that it is today.
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