Paleoecology of benthic community replacement

Miller, William R.

doi:10.1111/j.1502-3931.1986.tb00735.x

Cited by 62 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 21 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The changes of biofacies through time in the studied section represent a sequence of community replacement ( sensu [87]), in which palaeocommunity changes are driven by temporal changes in the environment. Environmental forcing of biotic change is now widely recognized to occur over a range of geographical and temporal scales throughout the Phanerozoic, although cause-end-effect relationships are not always well understood ([88] and references therein).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Global Warming and Anoxia on Marine Benthic Community Dynamics: an Example from the Toarcian (Early Jurassic)

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Pliensbachian-Toarcian (Early Jurassic) fossil record is an archive of natural data of benthic community response to global warming and marine long-term hypoxia and anoxia. In the early Toarcian mean temperatures increased by the same order of magnitude as that predicted for the near future; laminated, organic-rich, black shales were deposited in many shallow water epicontinental basins; and a biotic crisis occurred in the marine realm, with the extinction of approximately 5% of families and 26% of genera. High-resolution quantitative abundance data of benthic invertebrates were collected from the Cleveland Basin (North Yorkshire, UK), and analysed with multivariate statistical methods to detect how the fauna responded to environmental changes during the early Toarcian. Twelve biofacies were identified. Their changes through time closely resemble the pattern of faunal degradation and recovery observed in modern habitats affected by anoxia. All four successional stages of community structure recorded in modern studies are recognised in the fossil data (i.e. Stage III: climax; II: transitional; I: pioneer; 0: highly disturbed). Two main faunal turnover events occurred: (i) at the onset of anoxia, with the extinction of most benthic species and the survival of a few adapted to thrive in low-oxygen conditions (Stages I to 0) and (ii) in the recovery, when newly evolved species colonized the re-oxygenated soft sediments and the path of recovery did not retrace of pattern of ecological degradation (Stages I to II). The ordination of samples coupled with sedimentological and palaeotemperature proxy data indicate that the onset of anoxia and the extinction horizon coincide with both a rise in temperature and sea level. Our study of how faunal associations co-vary with long and short term sea level and temperature changes has implications for predicting the long-term effects of “dead zones” in modern oceans.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Global Warming and Anoxia on Marine Benthic Community Dynamics: an Example from the Toarcian (Early Jurassic)

et al. 2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This obviously was not right. It is now accepted that most of these purported cases of succession in the fossil record were really replacement sequences consisting of the remains of different local or regional ecosystems, paced by environmental fluctuations often caused by large-scale climatic and geologic processes (Miller 1986). Notwithstanding this fundamental scaling correction, many paleoecologists continue to refer to almost any sample of fossils -of almost any size -as a "community."…”

Section: Some Consequences Of Ignoring Hierarchical Organizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Hierarchical Structure of Ecosystems: Connections to Evolution

Miller

2007

Evo Edu Outreach

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Ecologic systems, which are involved mainly in the processing of energy and materials, are actually nested one inside another-they are simultaneously parts and wholes. This fundamental hierarchical organization is easy to detect in nature but has been undervalued by ecologists as a source of new insights about the structure and development of ecosystems and as a means of understanding the crucial connections between ecologic processes and large-scale evolutionary patterns. These ecologic systems include individual organisms bundled into local populations, populations as functional components of local communities or ecosystems, local systems making up the working parts of larger regional ecosystems, and so on, right up to the entire biosphere. Systems at any level of organization can be described and interpreted based on aspects of scale (size, duration, and "membership" in more inclusive entities), integration (all the vital connections both at a particular focal level and across levels of hierarchical organization), spatiotemporal continuity (the "life history" of each system), and boundaries (either membranes, skins, or some other kind of border criterion). Considering hierarchical organization as a general feature of ecologic systems could reinvigorate theoretical ecology, provide a realistic scaling framework for paleoecologic studies, and -most importantly -forge new and productive connections between ecology and evolutionary theory.

show abstract

“…Vertical changes in the structure and composition of bioconstructions may be interpreted as being the result of the temporal replacement of communities in response to more or less brusque variations in the immediate environment. The theoretical aspects involved in these substitutions of species assemblies through environmental alterations have been discussed by Miller (1986) and Miller & DuBar (1988). Otherwise, such changes can be explained as the result of ecological successions in which the organisms themselves control the temporal transformations within the communities.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Coral successions in Upper Tortonian reefs in SE Spain

Martín

Braga

Rivas

1989

LET

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Martin, Jose M., Braga, Juan C. & Rivas, Pascual 1989 07 15: Coral successions in Upper Tortonian reefs in SE Spain. Lethaia, Vol. 22, pp. 271–286. oslo. ISSN 0024–1164, During the Upper Tortonian (Upper Miocene), the Almanzora river corridor, a small Neogene basin in SE Spain, harboured coral reefs growing in three different environments: in fan deltas, beyond the influence of coarse terrigenous sedimentation; in the abandoned lobes of a delta complex; and on coastal margins. All of these reefs are composed of several successive beds, each of which may be made up mainly of Porites embedded in silt or of an initial Porites level followed by a silt‐free Tarbellastraea level on top. Porites may be associated with corallines. This structure is interpreted as being the result of an ecological succession repeated over and over again. A pioneer association consisting mainly of Porites. by colonizing the substrate and continuing to grow through relatively adverse silt‐deposition conditions, prepares the ground for Tarbellastraea to take over. A return to the previous conditions halts the growth of the Tarbellastraea colonies and the Porites association once more establishes itself in the silt, or else the renewed rate of deposition is sufficiently heavy to suffocate the whole bioconstruction.*Ecological succession. coral reefs, Tortonian, southeast Spain.

show abstract

Paleoecology of benthic community replacement

Cited by 62 publications

References 21 publications

The Impact of Global Warming and Anoxia on Marine Benthic Community Dynamics: an Example from the Toarcian (Early Jurassic)

The Impact of Global Warming and Anoxia on Marine Benthic Community Dynamics: an Example from the Toarcian (Early Jurassic)

The Hierarchical Structure of Ecosystems: Connections to Evolution

Coral successions in Upper Tortonian reefs in SE Spain

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About