fresh bytes
Subscribe Now

Simulation maps the rise and fall of species over 800,000 years

The Amazon and the adjacent Andean slopes in South America host an astonishing richness of plants and animals. These species have been sources of food, shelter and medicine since the arrival of humans and a target of scientific curiosity since the days of the earliest European naturalist explorers.

What processes produce such hot spots of species richness, and why does biodiversity gradually decline towards higher latitudes and drier climates? Scientists have proposed many competing explanations, but there is no easy way to test them. As biogeographers, those of us who study the geography of life on the planet, we do not have the option of carrying out real-world experiments. It would be both impractical and unethical to undertake massive introductions or exterminations of species and then wait centuries or millennia for results.

Instead, as reported in our recent study published in the journal Science, we brought together an interdisciplinary team of biogeographers and climate modelers to create a virtual world – a place to do virtual experiments. The world we recreated was a time-lapse simulation of life on the continent of South America, from 800,000 years ago up to the present, through the whipsaw climates of the last eight glacial cycles. If patterns of biodiversity produced in this simulated world produced reasonably realistic patterns of diversity, then we could be confident that the ecological and evolutionary processes built into the simulation were right.

Read more at Smithsonianmag.com

Leave a Reply

featured blogs
Mar 31, 2023
Learn how (and why) the semiconductor industry is moving towards chiplet-enabled multi-die systems in our research piece in MIT's Technology Review Insights. The post An Industry-Wide Look at the Move Toward Multi-Die Systems appeared first on New Horizons for Chip Design....
Mar 31, 2023
The Verisium Debug platform is optimized for scalability, supporting debugging of simulation runs and emulation, where support for loading large source files and handling huge amounts of probe data is a must. Join this free Cadence Training Webinar to learn how to automate yo...
Mar 30, 2023
Are you in desperate need of a program manager to instigate a new project or rescue an existing project that is spiraling out of control?...

featured video

First CXL 2.0 IP Interoperability Demo with Compliance Tests

Sponsored by Synopsys

In this video, Sr. R&D Engineer Rehan Iqbal, will guide you through Synopsys CXL IP passing compliance tests and demonstrating our seamless interoperability with Teladyne LeCroy Z516 Exerciser. This first-of-its-kind interoperability demo is a testament to Synopsys' commitment to delivering reliable IP solutions.

Learn more about Synopsys CXL here

featured chalk talk

EV Charging: Understanding the Basics
Sponsored by Mouser Electronics and Bel
Have you ever considered what the widespread adoption of electric vehicles will look like? What infrastructure requirements will need to be met? In this episode of Chalk Talk, I chat about all of this and more with Bruce Rose from Bel. We review the basics of EV charging, investigate the charging requirements for both AC and DC chargers, and examine the role that on-board inverters play in electric vehicle charging.
Mar 27, 2023
711 views