Abstract
The mechanisms that allow species to evolve, coexist, compete, cooperate or become extinct are becoming always more understood. At the same time, the factors that allow species to coexist in a given time within the same environment are still debated. Many theories and hypotheses suggest that competition tends to differentiate the ecological requirements after repeated interactions and to allow the presence of many different species in the same area (i.e. biodiversity). After all, a thorough understanding of the evolutionary dynamics of biodiversity, which could somehow explain the current distribution patterns and mechanisms of coexistence, must consider the biogeographic and phylogenetic approaches. Here I propose a new graphic model that reviews the past and present, and sometimes debated, trends in biodiversity and evolutionary science, pointing out the importance of the avoidance of competition, the biological history, the endogenosymbiosis and the three-dimensionality as the main forces that structure ecosystems and allow the evolution of biological diversity. This model is an attempt to explain and summarize some of the mechanisms that underlie the current presence of the awesome number of species that currently inhabit our planet.
References
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