Biodiversity and extinction

Today's biodiversity is the result of a long-lasting process of origination and extinction of species. The history of this process can be explored by fossil databases. A new mathematical model for the network of dependencies between species helps to improve our understanding of the mechanisms of this process. For instance, the model can explain in which circumstances the extinction of a single species may initiate a mass extinction, and why the growth of the biodiversity on land and in the sea has been qualitatively different from each other.