Biodiversity Explained, from Thomas Miller
Biodiversity Explained by Ignoring the Forest for the Trees:
A painstaking, multidecade study of 33,000 individual trees may finally have uncovered the roots of biodiversity.
That biodiversity’s origin needs uncovering is surprising because the word seems to be everywhere. But scientists still don’t quite understand why one place has more species than another, or fewer.
The traditional explanation — every organism has its niche, competing not with other species but its own — sounds nice, but has holes. According to the tree study, that’s because ecologists haven’t looked for the right niches.