Graptolite community responses to global climate change and the Late Ordovician mass extinction.

ABSTRACT: Mass extinctions disrupt ecological communities. Although climate changes produce stress in ecological communities, few paleobiological studies have systematically addressed the impact of global climate changes on the fine details of community structure with a view to understanding how changes in community structure presage, or even cause, biodiversity decline during mass extinctions. Based on a novel Bayesian approach to biotope assessment, we present a study of changes in species abundance distribution patterns of macroplanktonic graptolite faunas (∼447-444 Ma) leading into the Late Ordovician mass extinction. Communities at two contrasting sites exhibit significant decreases in complexity and evenness as a consequence of the preferential decline in abundance of dysaerobic zone specialis

SUBMITTER: Sheets HD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4968751 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature