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This book examines crucial questions about species diversity, and seeks to set the agenda for research well into the next century. Why do larger areas have more species? What makes diversity so high near the equator? Has the number of species grown in the last 600 million years? Does habitat diversity support species diversity, or is it the other way around? What reduces diversity in ecologically productive places? At what scales of space and time do diversity patterns hold? Do the mechanisms that produce them vary with scale? Surprisingly, it is argued, many of these questions have reasonably likely answers.