Marine life on Earth is known back to the Archean Eon, when life on land is assumed to have been less pervasive than now. Precambrian life on land can now be tested with stable isotopes because living soil CO is isotopically distinct for both carbon and oxygen from both marine and volcanic CO. Our novel compilation of previously published oxygen and carbon isotopic compositions of pedogenic and paleokarst carbonate can be compared with the coeval marine record. Long-term enrichment (to heavier isotopic composition) of oxygen, but no significant trend in carbon through time, long apparent from marine carbonate, is now demonstrated also for pedogenic and paleokarst carbonate. Oxygen isotopic enrichment is not due to changing global temperature or hypsometry, but to increased evapotranspiration and photosynthesis on larger continents. Differences in isotopic composition between land and sea have increased in an episodic fashion, peaking at times of major evolutionary innovations for life on land, and also at times of ice ages. The δC and δO divergences between land and sea correspond to terrestrial productivity spikes including evolution of Neoproterozoic (635 Ma) lichens, middle Ordovician (470 Ma) non-vascular land plants, middle Devonian (385 Ma) forests, early Cretaceous (125 Ma) angiosperms, and middle Miocene (20 Ma) sod grasslands.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-78838-w | DOI Listing |
Landsc Ecol
January 2025
Department of Spatial Sciences, Faculty of Environmental Sciences, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Kamýcká 129, 165 00 Praha - Suchdol, Czech Republic.
Context: Historical land use is thought to have influenced plant community diversity, composition and function through the local persistence of taxa that reflect ecological conditions of the past.
Objectives: We tested for the effects of historical land use on contemporary plant species richness, composition, and ecological preferences in the grassland vegetation of Central Europe.
Methods: We analyzed 6975 vegetation plots sampled between 1946 and 2021 in dry, mesic, and wet grasslands in the borderland between Austria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.
Front Parasitol
January 2024
Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada.
With climate and land use changes, tick-borne pathogens are expected to become more widely distributed in Canada. Pathogen spread and transmission in this region is modulated by changes in the abundance and distribution of tick and host populations. Here, we assessed the relationships between pathogens detected in and mammal hosts at sites of different levels of disease risk using data from summer field surveys in Ontario and Quebec, Canada.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEcology
January 2025
Key Laboratory of Southwest China Wildlife Resources Conservation (Ministry of Education), China West Normal University, Nanchong, China.
Understanding the patterns and drivers of species range shifts is essential to disentangle mechanisms driving species' responses to global change. Here, we quantified local extinction and colonization dynamics of giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) using occurrence data collected by harnessing the labor of >1000 workers and >60,000 worker days for each of the three periods (TP1: 1985-1988, TP2: 1998-2002, and TP3: 2011-2014), and evaluated how these patterns were associated with (1) protected area, (2) local rarity/abundance, and (3) abiotic factors (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEcology
January 2025
Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biosciences, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
Many vector-borne diseases are sensitive to changes in land use and climate; hence, it is important to understand the factors that govern the vector populations. Ixodid ticks, which serve as vectors for multiple diseases, have a slow life cycle compared with many of their hosts. The observable questing population represents only a fraction of the total tick population and may include overlapping cohorts in each stage.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Anat
January 2025
Institut des Sciences de l'Évolution de Montpellier (ISEM), Univ Montpellier, CNRS, IRD, Montpellier, France.
Raoellidae are small artiodactyls from the Indian subcontinent closely related to stem cetaceans. They bring crucial information to understand the early phase of the land-to-water transition in Cetacea. If they are considered to be partly aquatic, the question of their dietary habits remains partly understood due to their "transitional" morphology.
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