Rebuilding Diversity in the Anthropocene

Christian Voolstra, Ruben Hermann, Alexander Keller, Herwig Stibor, Lutz Becks

Rapid changes driven by the Anthropocene—including shifts in climate, nutrients,
habitats, and species composition—are causing severe biodiversity loss while creating
new ecological opportunities. The balance between short-term ecological shifts in
realized niches and long-term evolutionary changes in fundamental niches determines
diversification. In the Anthropocene, however, this balance is unstable, as
environmental turnover often outpaces adaptive evolution. Processes such as
interaction-network rewiring, mutualism loss or emergence, and microbiome-mediated
plasticity can hinder or promote diversification. Identifying when opportunities persist,
drive fundamental niche evolution, and enable biodiversity to withstand or recover from
rapid global change requires a predictive framework linking ecological dynamics,
evolutionary mechanisms, and host–microbiome interactions.