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Quantifying ecological impacts of mass extinctions with network analysis of fossil communities.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 05 15; 115(20):5217-5222.PN

Abstract

Mass extinctions documented by the fossil record provide critical benchmarks for assessing changes through time in biodiversity and ecology. Efforts to compare biotic crises of the past and present, however, encounter difficulty because taxonomic and ecological changes are decoupled, and although various metrics exist for describing taxonomic turnover, no methods have yet been proposed to quantify the ecological impacts of extinction events. To address this issue, we apply a network-based approach to exploring the evolution of marine animal communities over the Phanerozoic Eon. Network analysis of fossil co-occurrence data enables us to identify nonrandom associations of interrelated paleocommunities. These associations, or evolutionary paleocommunities, dominated total diversity during successive intervals of relative community stasis. Community turnover occurred largely during mass extinctions and radiations, when ecological reorganization resulted in the decline of one association and the rise of another. Altogether, we identify five evolutionary paleocommunities at the generic and familial levels in addition to three ordinal associations that correspond to Sepkoski's Cambrian, Paleozoic, and Modern evolutionary faunas. In this context, we quantify magnitudes of ecological change by measuring shifts in the representation of evolutionary paleocommunities over geologic time. Our work shows that the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event had the largest effect on ecology, followed in descending order by the Permian-Triassic, Cretaceous-Paleogene, Devonian, and Triassic-Jurassic mass extinctions. Despite its taxonomic severity, the Ordovician extinction did not strongly affect co-occurrences of taxa, affirming its limited ecological impact. Network paleoecology offers promising approaches to exploring ecological consequences of extinctions and radiations.

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Authors+Show Affiliations

Muscente AD
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; muscente@g.harvard.edu aknoll@oeb.harvard.edu.
Prabhu A
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Jonsson-Rowland Science Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180.
Zhong H
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Jonsson-Rowland Science Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180.
Eleish A
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Jonsson-Rowland Science Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180.
Meyer MB
Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, DC 20015.
Fox P
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Jonsson-Rowland Science Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180.
Hazen RM
Geophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, DC 20015.
Knoll AH
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138; muscente@g.harvard.edu aknoll@oeb.harvard.edu.

MeSH

AnimalsBiodiversityBiological EvolutionDatabases, FactualEcosystemExtinction, BiologicalFossilsGeologyInvertebratesPaleontology

Pub Type(s)

Journal Article
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Language

eng

PubMed ID

29686079

Citation

Muscente, A D., et al. "Quantifying Ecological Impacts of Mass Extinctions With Network Analysis of Fossil Communities." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 115, no. 20, 2018, pp. 5217-5222.
Muscente AD, Prabhu A, Zhong H, et al. Quantifying ecological impacts of mass extinctions with network analysis of fossil communities. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018;115(20):5217-5222.
Muscente, A. D., Prabhu, A., Zhong, H., Eleish, A., Meyer, M. B., Fox, P., Hazen, R. M., & Knoll, A. H. (2018). Quantifying ecological impacts of mass extinctions with network analysis of fossil communities. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(20), 5217-5222. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1719976115
Muscente AD, et al. Quantifying Ecological Impacts of Mass Extinctions With Network Analysis of Fossil Communities. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 05 15;115(20):5217-5222. PubMed PMID: 29686079.
* Article titles in AMA citation format should be in sentence-case
TY - JOUR T1 - Quantifying ecological impacts of mass extinctions with network analysis of fossil communities. AU - Muscente,A D, AU - Prabhu,Anirudh, AU - Zhong,Hao, AU - Eleish,Ahmed, AU - Meyer,Michael B, AU - Fox,Peter, AU - Hazen,Robert M, AU - Knoll,Andrew H, Y1 - 2018/04/23/ PY - 2018/4/25/pubmed PY - 2018/9/5/medline PY - 2018/4/25/entrez KW - biodiversification KW - evolutionary fauna KW - mass extinction KW - network KW - paleoecology SP - 5217 EP - 5222 JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America JO - Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A VL - 115 IS - 20 N2 - Mass extinctions documented by the fossil record provide critical benchmarks for assessing changes through time in biodiversity and ecology. Efforts to compare biotic crises of the past and present, however, encounter difficulty because taxonomic and ecological changes are decoupled, and although various metrics exist for describing taxonomic turnover, no methods have yet been proposed to quantify the ecological impacts of extinction events. To address this issue, we apply a network-based approach to exploring the evolution of marine animal communities over the Phanerozoic Eon. Network analysis of fossil co-occurrence data enables us to identify nonrandom associations of interrelated paleocommunities. These associations, or evolutionary paleocommunities, dominated total diversity during successive intervals of relative community stasis. Community turnover occurred largely during mass extinctions and radiations, when ecological reorganization resulted in the decline of one association and the rise of another. Altogether, we identify five evolutionary paleocommunities at the generic and familial levels in addition to three ordinal associations that correspond to Sepkoski's Cambrian, Paleozoic, and Modern evolutionary faunas. In this context, we quantify magnitudes of ecological change by measuring shifts in the representation of evolutionary paleocommunities over geologic time. Our work shows that the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event had the largest effect on ecology, followed in descending order by the Permian-Triassic, Cretaceous-Paleogene, Devonian, and Triassic-Jurassic mass extinctions. Despite its taxonomic severity, the Ordovician extinction did not strongly affect co-occurrences of taxa, affirming its limited ecological impact. Network paleoecology offers promising approaches to exploring ecological consequences of extinctions and radiations. SN - 1091-6490 UR - https://www.unboundmedicine.com/medline/citation/29686079/Quantifying_ecological_impacts_of_mass_extinctions_with_network_analysis_of_fossil_communities_ DB - PRIME DP - Unbound Medicine ER -