Amidst long-term fluctuations of the abiotic environment, the degree to which life organizes into distinct biogeographic provinces (provinciality) can reveal the fundamental drivers of global biodiversity. Our understanding of present-day biogeography implies that changes in the distribution of continents across climatic zones have predictable effects on habitat distribution, dispersal barriers and the evolution of provinciality. To assess marine provinciality through the Phanerozoic, here we (a) simulate provinces based on palaeogeographic reconstructions and global climate models and (b) contrast them with empirically derived provinces that we define using network analysis of fossil occurrences. Simulated and empirical patterns match reasonably well and consistently suggest a greater than 15% increase in provinciality since the Mesozoic era. Although both factors played a role, the simulations imply that the effect of the latitudinal temperature gradient has been twice as important in determining marine provinciality as continental configuration.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.1342 | DOI Listing |
PeerJ
August 2023
Undory Paleontological Museum, Undory, Ulyanovsk Oblast, Russia.
From the Middle Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous, metriorhynchid crocodylomorphs inhabited marine ecosystems across the European archipelago. Unfortunately, European metriorhynchids are only well known from Germany, France, and the UK, with the Eastern European fossil record being especially poor. This hinders our understanding of metriorhynchid biodiversity across these continuous seaways, and our ability to investigate provincialism.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Biol Sci
May 2022
Evolution and Diversity Dynamics Lab, UR Geology, Université de Liège, 14 Allée du 6 Août, Liège 4000, Belgium.
Mosasaurid squamates were the dominant amniote predators in marine ecosystems during most of the Late Cretaceous. Here, we use a suite of biomechanically rooted, functionally descriptive ratios in a framework adapted from population ecology to investigate how the morphofunctional disparity of mosasaurids evolved prior to the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K/Pg) mass extinction. Our results suggest that taxonomic turnover in mosasaurid community composition from Campanian to Maastrichtian is reflected by a notable global increase in morphofunctional disparity, especially driving the North American record.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Microbiol
January 2022
Ocean Frontier Institute and Department of Oceanography, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada.
In the marine realm, microorganisms are responsible for the bulk of primary production, thereby sustaining marine life across all trophic levels. Longhurst provinces have distinct microbial fingerprints; however, little is known about how microbial diversity and primary productivity change at finer spatial scales. Here, we sampled the Atlantic Ocean from south to north (~50°S-50°N), every ~0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Biol Sci
November 2021
Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney 2109, Australia.
Latitudinal diversity gradients are among the most striking patterns in nature. Despite a large body of work investigating both geographic and environmental drivers, biogeographical provinces have not been included in statistical models of diversity patterns. Instead, spatial studies tend to focus on species-area and local-regional relationships.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Biol Sci
August 2021
GeoZentrum Nordbayern, Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Loewenichstraße 28, 91054 Erlangen, Germany.
Amidst long-term fluctuations of the abiotic environment, the degree to which life organizes into distinct biogeographic provinces (provinciality) can reveal the fundamental drivers of global biodiversity. Our understanding of present-day biogeography implies that changes in the distribution of continents across climatic zones have predictable effects on habitat distribution, dispersal barriers and the evolution of provinciality. To assess marine provinciality through the Phanerozoic, here we (a) simulate provinces based on palaeogeographic reconstructions and global climate models and (b) contrast them with empirically derived provinces that we define using network analysis of fossil occurrences.
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