Author Identifier (ORCID)

Alexandre C. Siqueira: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7970-4024

Abstract

Habitat condition and area shape global species distributions, with shallow-water reefs hosting a disproportional share of marine biodiversity. Although reef area is a well-established predictor of marine species richness, its historical context is less well understood. Here, we show that the rise of tropical marine biodiversity is closely tied to reef expansion in space and time. During the Early/Mid Miocene (23 to 11.6 million years ago), Indo-Pacific reefs reached unprecedented size and thickness, surpassing any reef systems in the past 66 million years. These massive reefs, likely driven by unique environmental, biotic, and tectonic conditions, fostered the expanding diversity and functional evolution of marine fish and coral assemblages. Our findings underscore the importance of historical reef contexts and the implications of ongoing reef losses for tropical marine biodiversity.

Keywords

Marine biodiversity, coral reefs, species distribution, reef expansion, miocene, paleoecology

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of Publication

5-1-2026

Volume

12

Issue

18

PubMed ID

42054460

Publication Title

Science Advances

Publisher

American Association for the Advancement of Science

School

Centre for Marine Ecosystems Research / School of Science

Funders

This work was supported by Edith Cowan University (Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellowship; A.C.S.), Australian Research Council [FL190100062 (D.R.B. and A.C.S.) and DE250101047 (A.C.S.)], and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft [KI 806/17-1 (W.K.); grant embedded in the Research Unit TERSANE (FOR 2332)].

Grant Number

ARC Numbers : FL190100062, DE250101047

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Comments

Siqueira, A. C., Kiessling, W., Raja, N. B., & Bellwood, D. R. (2026). The rise and fall of the world’s greatest marine biodiversity hotspot. Science Advances, 12(18), eaec7264. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aec7264

First Page

eaec7264

Download

Share

 
COinS
 

Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.1126/sciadv.aec7264