The world’s species are playing musical chairs: how will it end?

Submission statement: Maturing big data analysis of biodiversity has lead us to some strange and surprising conclusions about biodiversity: it is not decreasing, even as the extinction rate far exceeds what it was before human domination of ecoystems.

I am intrigued by the outcomes of mature, careful, analysis of large datasets in biology leading us to conclusions very different to those drawn from prior studies. Ecology isn’t the only field this has occurred in. Similar trends can be seen in genetics and microbiome studies.