Mass extinctions alter extinction and origination dynamics with respect to body size

2021 ◽  
Vol 288 (1960) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pedro M. Monarrez ◽  
Noel A. Heim ◽  
Jonathan L. Payne
Keyword(s):  
Body Size ◽  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Marine Animal ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Extinction Selectivity ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Mass Extinction Events ◽  
Marine Biosphere

Whether mass extinctions and their associated recoveries represent an intensification of background extinction and origination dynamics versus a separate macroevolutionary regime remains a central debate in evolutionary biology. The previous focus has been on extinction, but origination dynamics may be equally or more important for long-term evolutionary outcomes. The evolution of animal body size is an ideal process to test for differences in macroevolutionary regimes, as body size is easily determined, comparable across distantly related taxa and scales with organismal traits. Here, we test for shifts in selectivity between background intervals and the ‘Big Five’ mass extinction events using capture–mark–recapture models. Our body-size data cover 10 203 fossil marine animal genera spanning 10 Linnaean classes with occurrences ranging from Early Ordovician to Late Pleistocene (485–1 Ma). Most classes exhibit differences in both origination and extinction selectivity between background intervals and mass extinctions, with the direction of selectivity varying among classes and overall exhibiting stronger selectivity during origination after mass extinction than extinction during the mass extinction. Thus, not only do mass extinction events shift the marine biosphere into a new macroevolutionary regime, the dynamics of recovery from mass extinction also appear to play an underappreciated role in shaping the biosphere in their aftermath.

scholarly journals Dead clades walking are a pervasive macroevolutionary pattern

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (15) ◽  
pp. e2019208118
Author(s):  
B. Davis Barnes ◽  
Judith A. Sclafani ◽  
Andrew Zaffos
Keyword(s):  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Bayesian Method ◽  
Marine Invertebrate ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Extinction Event ◽  
Genus Richness ◽  
Mass Extinction Event ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Mass Extinction Events

D. Jablonski [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 99, 8139–8144 (2002)] coined the term “dead clades walking” (DCWs) to describe marine fossil orders that experience significant drops in genus richness during mass extinction events and never rediversify to previous levels. This phenomenon is generally interpreted as further evidence that the macroevolutionary consequences of mass extinctions can continue well past the formal boundary. It is unclear, however, exactly how long DCWs are expected to persist after extinction events and to what degree they impact broader trends in Phanerozoic biodiversity. Here we analyze the fossil occurrences of 134 skeletonized marine invertebrate orders in the Paleobiology Database (paleobiodb.org) using a Bayesian method to identify significant change points in genus richness. Our analysis identifies 70 orders that experience major diversity losses without recovery. Most of these taxa, however, do not fit the popular conception of DCWs as clades that narrowly survive a mass extinction event and linger for only a few stages before succumbing to extinction. The median postdrop duration of these DCW orders is long (>30 Myr), suggesting that previous studies may have underestimated the long-term taxonomic impact of mass extinction events. More importantly, many drops in diversity without recovery are not associated with mass extinction events and occur during background extinction stages. The prevalence of DCW orders throughout both mass and background extinction intervals and across phyla (>50% of all marine invertebrate orders) suggests that the DCW pattern is a major component of macroevolutionary turnover.

Incumbent replacement: evidence for long-term evolutionary progress

Paleobiology ◽  
1991 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 202-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Rosenzweig ◽  
Robert D. McCord
Keyword(s):  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Extinction Rate ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Evolutionary Progress ◽  
The North ◽  
Pure Chance ◽  
S Curve ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Mass Extinction Events

Evolutionary progress is a trend that relaxes trade-off rules. It begins with the evolution of a key adaptation. It continues with the spread of the key adaptation as the clade that contains it replaces some older clade that lacks it. Key adaptations are those that allow for improvement in at least one organismal function at a reduced fitness cost in other functions.Replacement almost certainly involves more than pure chance. It may not often involve competitive extinction. Instead, species from the new clade produce new species to replace already extinct species from the old clade. The key adaptation gives them a higher competitive speciation rate than old-clade sources of replacement. The process, termed incumbent replacement, proceeds at a rate limited by extinction rate. Thus, replacement often seems linked to mass extinction events.The incumbent-replacement hypothesis explains what we know about the replacement of straight-neck turtles (Amphichelydia) by those that can flex their necks and protect their heads in their shells. This replacement occurred four or five times in different biotic provinces. It happened as long ago as the Cretaceous in Eurasia, and as recently as the Pleistocene in mainland Australia. It was accomplished in Gondwanaland by turtles flexing their necks sideways (Pleurodira), and in the north by those flexing their necks into an S-curve (Cryptodira). As is typical of replacements, amphichelydian replacement took millions of years to accomplish wherever it occurred, and much of it in North America took place in a burst associated with and immediately subsequent to a mass extinction.

scholarly journals The biogeographical imprint of mass extinctions

2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1878) ◽  
pp. 20180232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ádám T. Kocsis ◽  
Carl J. Reddin ◽  
Wolfgang Kiessling
Keyword(s):  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Marine Species ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Marine Life ◽  
Extinction Rates ◽  
Evolution Of Life ◽  
Severe Reduction ◽  
Permian Extinction ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Mass Extinction Events

Mass extinctions are defined by extinction rates significantly above background levels and have had substantial consequences for the evolution of life. Geographically selective extinctions, subsequent originations and species redistributions may have changed global biogeographical structure, but quantification of this change is lacking. In order to assess quantitatively the biogeographical impact of mass extinctions, we outline time-traceable bioregions for benthic marine species across the Phanerozoic using a compositional network. Mass extinction events are visually recognizable in the geographical depiction of bioregions. The end-Permian extinction stands out with a severe reduction of provinciality. Time series of biogeographical turnover represent a novel aspect of the analysis of mass extinctions, confirming concentration of changes in the geographical distribution of benthic marine life.

4. The great catastrophes

2019 ◽  
pp. 51-75
Author(s):  
Paul B. Wignall
Keyword(s):  
Big Five ◽  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Early Jurassic ◽  
Late Devonian ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Short Intervals ◽  
Extinction Rates ◽  
The World ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Mass Extinction Events

What is a mass extinction? Mass extinction events are geologically short intervals of time (always under a million years), marked by dramatic increases of extinction rates in a broad range of environments around the world. In essence they are global catastrophes that left no environment unaffected and that have fundamentally changed the trajectory of life. ‘The great catastrophes’ describes the big five mass extinctions—the end-Ordovician 445 million years ago, the Late Devonian 374 million years ago, the Permo-Triassic 252 million years ago, the end-Triassic 201 million years ago, and Cretaceous-Paleogene sixty-six million years ago—and thoughts on their likely causes, along with other important extinction events identified at the start of the Cambrian and in the Early Jurassic.

Climate modelling of mass-extinction events: a review

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Feulner
Keyword(s):  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Plate Tectonics ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Volcanic Eruptions ◽  
Biological Species ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Climate Modelling ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Mass Extinction Events

AbstractDespite tremendous interest in the topic and decades of research, the origins of the major losses of biodiversity in the history of life on Earth remain elusive. A variety of possible causes for these mass-extinction events have been investigated, including impacts of asteroids or comets, large-scale volcanic eruptions, effects from changes in the distribution of continents caused by plate tectonics, and biological factors, to name but a few. Many of these suggested drivers involve or indeed require changes of Earth's climate, which then affect the biosphere of our planet, causing a global reduction in the diversity of biological species. It can be argued, therefore, that a detailed understanding of these climatic variations and their effects on ecosystems are prerequisites for a solution to the enigma of biological extinctions. Apart from investigations of the paleoclimate data of the time periods of mass extinctions, climate-modelling experiments should be able to shed some light on these dramatic events. Somewhat surprisingly, however, only a few comprehensive modelling studies of the climate changes associated with extinction events have been undertaken. These studies will be reviewed in this paper. Furthermore, the role of modelling in extinction research in general and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Death Star or Coherent Catastrophism?

Impact! ◽  
1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerrit L. Verschuur
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Great Discovery ◽  
Regular Manner ◽  
Goddard Institute ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
The University ◽  
Mass Extinction Events

Our instinct for survival drives us to learn as much as possible about what goes on around us. The better we understand nature, the better we will be able to predict its vagaries so as to avoid life-threatening situations. Unfortunately, nature is seldom so kind as to arrange for disasters to occur like clockwork, yet that does not dampen our enthusiasm when even a hint of periodicity in a complex phenomenon is spotted. This helps account for the furor that was created when a few paleontologists claimed that mass extinctions of species seemed to recur in a regular manner. A cycle, a periodicity, had been found! That implied that perhaps they might be able to predict nature’s next move. This is how I interpret the extraordinary public interest that was generated by the claims made around 1984 that the mass extinction phenomenon showed a roughly 30-million-year period (others said it was 26 million years). Almost immediately, several books appeared on the subject as well as many, many articles in the popular press and in science magazines. This activity marked the short life of the Death Star fiasco. Given our instinctual urge to look for order in the chaos of existence, the identification of a periodicity in mass-extinction events was a great discovery, if real. What was not highlighted by those who climbed aboard the bandwagon, however, was that the last peak in the pattern occurred about 13 million years ago. If impact-related mass extinction events were produced every 30 million years, there obviously was no cause for concern that we would be hit by a 10-kilometer object in the next 17 million years. Phew! I think that the suggestion that mass extinctions occurred on a regular cycle caused as much interest as it did because we all want to believe that there is no immediate danger to us. The Death Star fiasco began when David Raup and John Sepkowski of the University of Chicago published a report claiming that mass extinction events recurred about every 26 million years. They were followed by Michael Rampino and Richard Stothers of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York who claimed that the period was more like 30 million years, at least during the last 250 million years.

Mass Extinctions as Statistical Phenomena: An Examination of the Evidence Using χ2 Tests and Bootstrapping

Paleobiology ◽  
1992 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan E. Hubbard ◽  
Norman L. Gilinsky
Keyword(s):  
Late Cretaceous ◽  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Late Ordovician ◽  
Statistical Evidence ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Late Permian ◽  
Turnover Rates ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Mass Extinction Events

Although much natural historical evidence has been adduced in support of the occurrence of several mass extinctions during the Phanerozoic, unambiguous statistical confirmation of the mass extinction phenomenon has remained elusive. Using bootstrapping techniques that have not previously been applied to the study of mass extinction, we have amassed strong or very strong statistical evidence for mass extinctions (see text for definitions) during the Late Ordovician, Late Permian, and Late Cretaceous. Bootstrapping therefore verifies three of the mass extinction events that were proposed by Raup and Sepkoski (1982). A small amount of bootstrapping evidence is also presented for mass extinctions in the Induan (Triassic) and Coniacean (Cretaceous) Stages, but high overall turnover rates (including high origination) in the Induan and uncertain estimates of the temporal duration of the Coniacean force us to conclude that the evidence is not compelling.We also present the results of more liberal X2 tests of the differences between expected and observed numbers of familial extinctions for stratigraphic stages. In addition to verifying the mass extinctions identified using bootstrapping, these analyses suggest that several stages that could not be verified as mass extinction stages using bootstrapping (including the last three in the Devonian, and the Norian Stage of the Triassic) should still be regarded as candidates for mass extinction. Further analysis will be required to test these stages in more detail.

Evidence for extinction selectivity throughout the marine invertebrate fossil record

Paleobiology ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Alex Janevski ◽  
Tomasz K. Baumiller
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Fossil Record ◽  
Marine Invertebrate ◽  
Species Level ◽  
Geologic History ◽  
Extinction Selectivity ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Open Question ◽  
Mass Extinction Events

The fossil record has been used to show that in some geologic intervals certain traits of taxa may increase their survivability, and therefore that the risk of extinction is not randomly distributed among taxa. It has also been suggested that traits that buffer against extinction in background times do not confer the same resistance during mass extinction events. An open question is whether at any time in geologic history extinction probabilities were randomly distributed among taxa. Here we use a method for detecting random extinction to demonstrate that during both background and mass extinction times, extinction of marine invertebrate genera has been nonrandom with respect to species richness categories of genera. A possible cause for this nonrandom extinction is selective clustering of extinctions in genera consisting of species which possess extinction-biasing traits. Other potential causes considered here include geographic selectivity, increased extinction susceptibility for species in species-rich genera, or biases related to taxonomic practice and/or sampling heterogeneity. An important theoretical result is that extinction selectivity at the species level cannot be smoothly extrapolated upward to genera; the appearance of random genus extinction with respect to species richness of genera results when extinction has been highly selective at the species level.

scholarly journals Mass Extinctions, Comet Impacts, and The Galaxy

1998 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 246-251
Author(s):  
Michael R. Rampino ◽  
Richard B. Stothers
Keyword(s):  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Galactic Plane ◽  
Galactic Disk ◽  
Oort Cloud ◽  
Impact Craters ◽  
Statistical Analyses ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
The Galaxy ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Mass Extinction Events

Abstract The hypothesis relating mass extinctions of life on Earth to impacts of comets whose flux is partly modulated by the dynamics of the Milky Way Galaxy contains a number of postulates that can be tested by geologic evidence and statistical analyses. In an increasing number of cases, geologic evidence for impact (widespread impact debris and/or large impact craters) is found at times of mass extinction events, and the record of dated impact craters has been found to show a significant correlation with mass extinctions. Statistical analyses suggest that mass extinction events exhibit a periodic component of about 26 to 30 Myr, and periodicities of 30± 0.5 Myr and 35 ±2 Myr have been extracted from sets of well-dated impact craters. The evidence is consistent with periodic or quasi-periodic showers of impactors, probably Oort Cloud comets, with an approximately 30-Myr cycle. The best explanation for these proposed quasi-periodic comet showers involves the Sun’s vertical oscillation through the galactic disk, which may have a similar cycle time between crossings of the galactic plane.

Pulling the strands together

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Hallam
Keyword(s):  
Mass Extinction ◽  
Mass Extinctions ◽  
Adaptive Responses ◽  
Extinction Rates ◽  
Degree Of Confidence ◽  
Decisive Evidence ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Mass Extinction Events ◽  
Statistical Work

In drawing together the various strands we first need to ask how catastrophic, as opposed to merely calamitous, the various mass-extinction events were. As was indicated in Chapter 3, there is no way in which the stratigraphic record can ever provide dates that are precise to within less than a few thousand years. Thus, the connection between a bolide impact and a catastrophic phase of extinction lasting no longer than a few years could never be established with a high degree of confidence from the record of the strata alone. All that can be done is to establish a pattern that is consistent with such a scenario. As was also pointed out in Chapter 3, a change that is drastic enough over an interval of a few thousand to a few tens of thousands of years can reasonably be described as catastrophic in the context of normal patterns of geological change extending over millions of years. Several events seem to qualify unequivocally: the end-Permian, the end-Cretaceous, and, on a smaller scale, the end-Palaeocene, which affected only one group of deep-sea organisms. It needs to be added, though, that the end-Cretaceous event seems to have been the culmination of a phase of increased extinction rates among a wide variety of organisms. Such patterns of catastrophic change cannot yet be ruled out for the other mass-extinction events, but decisive evidence is not yet forthcoming. A more gradual or multiple pattern of extinctions appears to be more likely for the end-Ordovician, late Devonian, and end-Triassic extinctions and also for more minor ones such as those in the early Jurassic and mid-Cretaceous. Catastrophic coups de grâce are quite possible, if not probable, as culminating factors for some of these events, but more detailed collecting and statistical work across the world is required to put forward a stronger case than has been made so far. It has been claimed that the ‘big five’ mass extinctions are something special, as opposed to lesser extinction events, in so far as they were too drastic and rapid in their effects on many organisms to give time for normal Darwinian adaptive responses to operate.

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