Effect of nutrient availability on marine origination rates throughout the Phanerozoic eon

Cárdenas, Andrés; Harries, Peter J.

doi:10.1038/ngeo869

Cited by 67 publications

(94 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Evaluating the role of low seawater sulfate concentrations during the Mesozoic [12] may provide new insights into such seep ecosystems with a radically different trophic structure than the modern ones. Thus, the results presented here add to the growing body of evidence [43,44] that the chemical evolution of the oceans had a major impact on the evolution of marine life.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 73%

Did shifting seawater sulfate concentrations drive the evolution of deep-sea methane-seep ecosystems?

Kiel

2015

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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The origin and evolution of the faunas inhabiting deep-sea hydrothermal vents and methane seeps have been debated for decades. These faunas rely on a local source of sulfide and other reduced chemicals for nutrition, which spawned the hypothesis that their evolutionary history is independent from that of photosynthesis-based food chains and instead driven by extinction events caused by deep-sea anoxia. Here I use the fossil record of seep molluscs to show that trends in body size, relative abundance and epifaunal/infaunal ratios track current estimates of seawater sulfate concentrations through the last 150 Myr. Furthermore, the two main faunal turnovers during this time interval coincide with major changes in seawater sulfate concentrations. Because sulfide at seeps originates mostly from seawater sulfate, variations in sulfate concentrations should directly affect the base of the food chain of this ecosystem and are thus the likely driver of the observed macroecologic and evolutionary patterns. The results imply that the methane-seep fauna evolved largely independently from developments and mass extinctions affecting the photosynthesis-based biosphere and add to the growing body of evidence that the chemical evolution of the oceans had a major impact on the evolution of marine life.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 73%

Did shifting seawater sulfate concentrations drive the evolution of deep-sea methane-seep ecosystems?

Kiel

2015

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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“…Putative factors proposed to drive temporal fluctuation in biodiversity include biotic drivers, such as competition between taxa (13,14) and predation intensity (15). Alternatively, abiotic variables such as sea level change (16,17), nutrient inputs and shelf redox conditions (17,18), plate tectonic events (19), volcanism (20), bolide impacts (21), and global climate (8) have been invoked. The competing paradigms are labeled the "biotic" Red Queen and the "abiotic" Court Jester (22).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Biodiversity tracks temperature over time

Mayhew

Bell

Benton

et al. 2012

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

162

145

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The geographic distribution of life on Earth supports a general pattern of increase in biodiversity with increasing temperature. However, some previous analyses of the 540-million-year Phanerozoic fossil record found a contrary relationship, with paleodiversity declining when the planet warms. These contradictory findings are hard to reconcile theoretically. We analyze marine invertebrate biodiversity patterns for the Phanerozoic Eon while controlling for sampling effort. This control appears to reverse the temporal association between temperature and biodiversity, such that taxonomic richness increases, not decreases, with temperature. Increasing temperatures also predict extinction and origination rates, alongside other abiotic and biotic predictor variables. These results undermine previous reports of a negative biodiversity-temperature relationship through time, which we attribute to paleontological sampling biases. Our findings suggest a convergence of global scale macroevolutionary and macroecological patterns for the biodiversity-temperature relationship.climate change | Court Jester | mass extinction | Red Queen | rock record B eyond small geographical scales, biodiversity consistently decreases with latitude (1-3), reflecting a strong, probably causal, association between warmer climates and standing richness in both the terrestrial, water availability permitting (4), and marine realms (5, 6). Our understanding of the association between biodiversity and warm climates in space contrasts strongly with our models of how climate explains global diversity through time (7). One analysis of compendia of fossil taxa suggests that biodiversity declines with increasing global temperatures (8), but the focus on temperature as the driver, without reference to other variables, has drawn criticism (7). Analyses at smaller scales (geographic, temporal, or taxonomic) are equivocal (9). How can it be that warm temperatures should apparently have negative effects on biodiversity through time while also having positive effects across space (10) (i.e., contrasting macroevolutionary and macroecological patterns)? Recently, however, our understanding of past changes in biodiversity has been transformed by the application of techniques to control for sampling bias in paleodiversity data (11). Here we apply more-robust measures of fossil diversity, origination, and extinction through time to reevaluate the role of temperature in the context of other potential environmental drivers.Much effort to understand macroevolutionary changes through the Phanerozoic has focused on marine invertebrates, first through Sepkoski's genus-level compendium (12) and latterly via the Paleobiology Database Project (PaleoDB) (11). Putative factors proposed to drive temporal fluctuation in biodiversity include biotic drivers, such as competition between taxa (13, 14) and predation intensity (15). Alternatively, abiotic variables such as sea level change (16,17), nutrient inputs and shelf redox conditions (17, 18), plate tectonic events (19), volcan...

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“…In particular, it has been proposed that increased nutrient availability is associated with higher genus-level origination rates in the marine realm 28 , and a positive relationship between standing diversity and global temperature has been demonstrated throughout the Phanerozoic 29 . Furthermore, changes in sea level determine the amount of shallow water versus deeper water continental shelf area available for colonization 30 .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Also, equilibrium or saturation models 1,8,10,43,44 propose the existence of equilibrium carrying capacities at which new taxa can only emerge at the expense of others. These models therefore imply a strong biotic control on global biodiversity, while the carrying capacity itself is determined by both the diversity-dependent strength of interactions and abiotic resource levels 5,28,45 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Interdependence of specialization and biodiversity in Phanerozoic marine invertebrates

Nürnberg

Aberhan

2015

Nat Commun

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Studies of the dynamics of biodiversity often suggest that diversity has upper limits, but the complex interplay between ecological and evolutionary processes and the relative role of biotic and abiotic factors that set upper limits to diversity are poorly understood. Here we statistically assess the relationship between global biodiversity and the degree of habitat specialization of benthic marine invertebrates over the Phanerozoic eon. We show that variation in habitat specialization correlates positively with changes in global diversity, that is, times of high diversity coincide with more specialized faunas. We identify the diversity dynamics of specialists but not generalists, and origination rates but not extinction rates, as the main drivers of this ecological interdependence. Abiotic factors fail to show any significant relationship with specialization. Our findings suggest that the overall level of specialization and its fluctuations over evolutionary timescales are controlled by diversitydependent processes-driven by interactions between organisms competing for finite resources.

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Effect of nutrient availability on marine origination rates throughout the Phanerozoic eon

Cited by 67 publications

References 25 publications

Did shifting seawater sulfate concentrations drive the evolution of deep-sea methane-seep ecosystems?

Did shifting seawater sulfate concentrations drive the evolution of deep-sea methane-seep ecosystems?

Biodiversity tracks temperature over time

Interdependence of specialization and biodiversity in Phanerozoic marine invertebrates

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