Identifying the most surprising victims of mass extinction events: an example using Late Ordovician brachiopods.

ABSTRACT: Mass extinction events are recognized by increases in extinction rate and magnitude and, often, by changes in the selectivity of extinction. When considering the selective fingerprint of a particular event, not all taxon extinctions are equally informative: some would be expected even under a 'background' selectivity regime, whereas others would not and thus require special explanation. When evaluating possible drivers for the extinction event, the latter group is of particular interest. Here, we introduce a simple method for identifying these most surprising victims of extinction events by training models on background extinction intervals and using these models to make per-taxon assessments of 'expected' risk during the extinction interval. As an example, we examine brachiopod genus exti

SUBMITTER: Finnegan S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5627174 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature