专题：Science报道
珊瑚礁因其令人惊讶的多元性而备受称誉。但新的物种真的是从珊瑚礁那里产生出来的吗？或者如生态学家常常假设的，这些物种是从其它地方迁徙到珊瑚礁中去的。
据1月8日的《科学》杂志报道说， 在一项凸显了保护珊瑚礁重要性的研究中，科学家们发现，珊瑚礁对新物种的产生长久以来就一直是很重要的。 Wolfgang Kiessling及其在德国和美国的同僚对自寒武纪以来就生活在海底的生物化石的大型数据库进行了检验。 他们将珊瑚礁中首次出现的新属生物数与那些出现在其它浅水域环境中的新属生物数进行比较后发现，珊瑚礁不但容纳了极大的生物多元性，而且它也是一个新的在海底生活的物种首次出现的关键场所。（生物谷Bioon.com）
生物谷推荐原始出处：
Science 8 January 2010: DOI: 10.1126/science.1182241
Reefs as Cradles of Evolution and Sources of Biodiversity in the Phanerozoic
Wolfgang Kiessling,1,* Carl Simpson,1 Michael Foote2
Large-scale biodiversity gradients among environments and habitats are usually attributed to a complex array of ecological and evolutionary factors. We tested the evolutionary component of such gradients by compiling the environments of the geologically oldest occurrences of marine genera and using sampling standardization to assess if originations tended to be clustered in particular environments. Shallow, tropical environments and carbonate substrates all tend to have harbored high origination rates. Diversity within these environments tended to be preferentially generated in reefs, probably because of their habitat complexity. Reefs were also prolific at exporting diversity to other environments, which might be a consequence of low-diversity habitats being more susceptible to invasions.
1 Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity at the Humboldt University Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany.
2 Department of the Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
