Family misfortunes: related species vanish together

Entire branches of the tree of life can be lost in extinction events, not just individual species.

Previous work from the CPB and the Biology Division at Imperial have shown that modern species share the same risk of extinction with related species. "Species tend to be similar to their close relatives, just like people," said Grenyer. "We've shown in the past that if the bad things people do affect one species, they're likely also to affect other species in the family. In the casino of extinction, the odds are stacked against some groups of species, and rigged  in favour of others."

"The cool thing about the Roy study in Science is that they have shown the same thing seems to be true throughout a big chunk of fossil history. This gives us a really important clue about what the role of extinction events has been in shaping life on earth."

This work also reinforces how much genetic and ecological variety humanity stands to lose in the current extinction crisis. Grenyer likened the crisis to a fire in a library: "Because whole sections are lost - the whole of the physics section, or all of the romantic fiction, the overall loss is much worse than if you simply burned every 400th book"

Dr Richard Grenyer of the CPB was interviewed by BBC News about a recent paper in Science. Grenyer, who was not involved in the study itself, said "It's a really strong paper, showing that entire branches of the tree of life can be lost in extinction events, not just individual species."