Coral reefs are species factories, churning out more biodiversity than any other marine ecosystem, according to a paper published in a recent issue of the journal Science.
Wolfgang Kiessling, Carl Simpson, and Michael Foote came to this conclusion while studying the rate of evolution in coral reefs using the fossil record dating back to 540 million years.
Coral reefs are largely shallow-water and tropical ecosystems renowned for their biodiversity, but it is disputed whether this diversity is mainly generated within the reefs, or if reefs only attract biodiversity that originated from elsewhere.
The authors used fossil occurrence data of benthic marine invertebrate genera from the Paleobiology Database to test alternative hypotheses that coral reefs were sources or cradles of biodiversity throughout the 540 million years of the Phanerozoic eon.
Of the 6615 benthic invertebrate genera studied, the authors found an astounding 22% to originate from reef environments.
The reasons for the high evolutionary rates in coral reefs are complex but the authors surmise that the highly complex habitat offered by the reefs may have played a key role.
For more information, see the paper: Kiessling, W, C Simpson and M Foote (2010) Reefs as cradles of evolution and sources of biodiversity in the Phanerozoic. Science 327, pp. 196–198.