Earth is now in the middle of a mass extinction, the sixth one in the planet’s history, according to scientists.

And now a new study reports that species are going extinct hundreds or thousands of times faster than the expected rate.

The researchers also found that one extinction can cause ripple effects throughout an ecosystem, leaving other species vulnerable to the same fate. “Extinction breeds extinctions,” they write in their June 1 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

With the accelerating pace of destruction, scientists are racing to understand these fragile bits of life before they’re gone. “This means that the opportunity…