This is scientific Americans 60 Second Science. I'm Steve Mursky.

We find that the composition of ecosystems around the world is changing much more rapidly than we expected and indeed much more rapidly than ecological theory predicts.

Biologist Anne McGarran of the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

We still don't understand the consequences of this.

We think that it's going to be associated with a reduction in resilience in these assemblages,

but there are still many questions to be addressed about the consequences of this rapid biodiversity change.

And what it means is that if we're interested in conservation,

we need to do much more on the kind species.

We also need to track changes in the abunances

on identities with the species present in these ecosystems,

conservation biologists will need to keep track of the types of species that they find in these

places and policy makers will need to take a

account of these changes in their policy. To that end, McGurin and colleagues are

establishing what they're calling the Bio Time database, a repository for

information about ecological communities and populations and how they're

changing over time. McGurin spoke on January 26th with Scientific American Editor and Chief Marriott

D. Christina at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

And will the the data set is going to be out very soon?

Yes, yes, we're publishing the data set.

It's an open access data set.

So anybody anywhere in the world can use it

for research, for education, for conservation.

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