Brachiopod Biodiversity Dynamics in a Changing Climate
A special issue of Diversity (ISSN 1424-2818). This special issue belongs to the section "Animal Diversity".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2026 | Viewed by 25
Special Issue Editors
Interests: biogeography; database analysis; paleontology; earth sciences; brachiopoda
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Brachiopods, with a fossil record stretching back to 500 million years ago, are among the most informative and enduring clades in the marine ecosystem. Their remarkable preservation, diverse morphologies, and ecological persistence across mass extinctions and major climatic shifts make them powerful archives for studying the interplay between biodiversity, ecology, and environmental change. As living representatives of a lineage that has survived profound planetary transformations, brachiopods offer rare opportunities to link deep-time evolutionary patterns with present-day biological processes.
In this Special Issue, we invite studies that use brachiopods to illuminate the biological and ecological mechanisms shaping marine biodiversity—past, present, and future. Topics may include, but are not limited to, the following: macroevolutionary dynamics, taxonomic richness, functional diversity, paleoecology, biogeography, resilience and adaptation to stress, and conservation paleobiology informed by the fossil record. Contributions drawing on fossil and modern datasets, museum collections, field and experimental studies, or integrative modeling approaches are particularly encouraged.
By combining insights from fossil and living brachiopods, this Special Issue seeks to deepen our understanding of marine biodiversity dynamics and inform strategies for conserving vulnerable taxa in a rapidly changing world.
Dr. Facheng Ye
Prof. Dr. Renbin Zhan
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- brachiopoda
- biodiversity dynamics
- climate change
- paleoecology and biogeography
- macroevolution
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