SELECTIVITY OF EXTINCTION VERSUS RECOVERY: REINFORCEMENT, REVERSAL, AND RESHAPING OF BIOTIC CHANGE

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew M. Bush ◽  
◽  
Steve C. Wang ◽  
Jonathan L. Payne ◽  
Noel A. Heim
Keyword(s):  
Biotic Change

Middle Miocene recovery of Caribbean reef corals: New data from the Tamana Formation, Trinidad

2001 ◽  
Vol 75 (3) ◽  
pp. 513-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth G. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Miocene ◽  
New Records ◽  
Early Miocene ◽  
Early Pleistocene ◽  
Reef Corals ◽  
Rigorous Description ◽  
Caribbean Coral Reef ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Stratigraphic Ranges ◽  
Biotic Change

Caribbean coral reef communities were restructured by episodes of accelerated biotic change during the late Oligocene/early Miocene and the late Pliocene/early Pleistocene. However, rigorous description of the effects of rapid biotic change is problematic because preservation and exposure of coral-bearing deposits is not consistent in all stratigraphic intervals. In the Caribbean, early and middle Miocene exposures are more rare than late Miocene and Pliocene exposures. One exception is the late early to early middle Miocene Tamana Formation of Trinidad, and old and new collections from this unit were studied to determine the timing of recovery after the Oligocene/Miocene transition. A total of 41 species of zooxanthellate corals were recovered from the unit, including 21 new records. Within these assemblages, species first occurrences outnumber species last occurrences by a factor of four (31 first occurrences and eight last occurrences). The extension of the stratigraphic ranges of species previously first recorded in Pliocene sediments has reduced an apparent Pliocene pulse of origination, indicating that the Pliocene/Pleistocene transition was largely a result of accelerated extinction against a background of near-constant origination. The fact that few species last occur in the Tamana fauna indicates that the Oligocene/Miocene transition was complete by the end of the early Miocene.

scholarly journals Reproductive niche conservatism in the isolated New Zealand flora over 23 million years

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (10) ◽  
pp. 20140647 ◽  
Author(s):  
John G. Conran ◽  
William G. Lee ◽  
Daphne E. Lee ◽  
Jennifer M. Bannister ◽  
Uwe Kaulfuss
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Temporal Stability ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Niche Conservatism ◽  
Low Latitude ◽  
The Past ◽  
Nutrient Gradients ◽  
Biotic Change ◽  
New Zealand Flora

The temporal stability of plant reproductive features on islands has rarely been tested. Using flowers, fruits/cones and seeds from a well-dated (23 Ma) Miocene Lagerstätte in New Zealand, we show that across 23 families and 30 genera of forest angiosperms and conifers, reproductive features have remained constant for more than 20 Myr. Insect-, wind- and bird-pollinated flowers and wind- and bird-dispersed diaspores all indicate remarkable reproductive niche conservatism, despite widespread environmental and biotic change. In the past 10 Myr, declining temperatures and the absence of low-latitude refugia caused regional extinction of thermophiles, while orogenic processes steepened temperature, precipitation and nutrient gradients, limiting forest niches. Despite these changes, the palaeontological record provides empirical support for evidence from phylogeographical studies of strong niche conservatism within lineages and biomes.

Developing a radiometrically-dated chronologic sequence for Neogene biotic change in Australia, from the Riversleigh World Heritage Area of Queensland

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon Woodhead ◽  
Suzanne J. Hand ◽  
Michael Archer ◽  
Ian Graham ◽  
Kale Sniderman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
World Heritage ◽  
World Heritage Area ◽  
Biotic Change ◽  
Heritage Area

scholarly journals Stratigraphic Architecture of the Karoo River Channels at the End-Capitanian

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emese M. Bordy ◽  
Francisco Paiva
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Drivers ◽  
River Channels ◽  
Fold Belt ◽  
Karoo Basin ◽  
Architectural Elements ◽  
Stratigraphic Architecture ◽  
Cape Fold Belt ◽  
Biotic Change ◽  
Extinction Events ◽  
Fluvial Architecture

The main Karoo Basin of southern Africa contains the continental record of the end-Triassic, end-Permian, and end-Capitanian mass extinction events. Of these, the environmental drivers of the end-Capitanian are least known. Integrating quantitative stratigraphic architecture analysis from abundant outcrop profiles, paleocurrent measurements, and petrography, this study investigates the stratigraphic interval that records the end-Capitanian extinction event in the southwestern and southern main Karoo Basin and demonstrates that this biotic change coincided with a subtle variation in the stratigraphic architectural style ∼260 Ma ago. Our multi-proxy sedimentological work not only defines the depositional setting of the succession as a megafan system that drained the foothills of the Cape Fold Belt, but also attempts to differentiate the tectonic and climatic controls on the fluvial architecture of this paleontologically important Permian succession. Our results reveal limited changes in sediment sources, paleocurrents, sandstone body geometries, and possibly a constant hot, semi-arid paleoclimate during the deposition of the studied interval; however, the stratigraphic trends show upward increase in 1) laterally accreted, sandy architectural elements and 2) architectural elements that build a portion of the floodplain deposits. We consider this to reflect a long-term retrogradational stacking pattern of facies composition that can be linked to changes on the medial parts of southward draining megafans, where channel sinuosity increased, and depositional energy decreased at the end-Capitanian. The shift in the fluvial architecture was likely triggered by basin-wide allogenic controls rather than local autogenic processes because this trend is observed in the coeval stratigraphic intervals from geographically disparate areas in the southwestern and southern main Karoo Basin. Consequently, we propose that this regional backstepping most likely resulted from tectonic events in the adjacent Cape Fold Belt.

scholarly journals Global cooling & the rise of modern grasslands: Revealing cause & effect of environmental change on insect diversification dynamics

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katie E. Davis ◽  
Adam T. Bakewell ◽  
Jon Hill ◽  
Hojun Song ◽  
Peter Mayhew
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Information Transfer ◽  
Environmental Data ◽  
Global Temperature ◽  
Ecological Processes ◽  
Natural Systems ◽  
Global Cooling ◽  
Speciation Rates ◽  
Biotic Change ◽  
Life On Earth

AbstractUtilising geo-historical environmental data to disentangle cause and effect in complex natural systems is a major goal in our quest to better understand how climate change has shaped life on Earth. Global temperature is known to drive biotic change over macro-evolutionary time-scales but the mechanisms by which it acts are often unclear. Here, we model speciation rates for Orthoptera within a phylogenetic framework and use this to demonstrate that global cooling is strongly correlated with increased speciation rates. Transfer Entropy analyses reveal the presence of one or more additional processes that are required to explain the information transfer from global temperature to Orthoptera speciation. We identify the rise of C4 grasslands as one such mechanism operating from the Miocene onwards. We therefore demonstrate the value of the geological record in increasing our understanding of climate change on macro-evolutionary and macro-ecological processes.

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