Have you ever wondered what actually makes the tropics so abundant of life, and on top of that much more varied (i.e. higher biodiversity) compared to further away from the equator? The short answer would probably be "the weather", which is certainly true to some extent. But why does differences in climate have these kind of effects?

For my master's thesis, I've been looking closer at ecosystems on a global scale, to search for underlying reasons for if and how different geographical and environmental properties affect how species interact with each other. This, in turn, may help explain what happens in the background to cause the differences in biodiversity around the world.

Mikael Ohlsson