Stratigraphic signatures of mass extinctions: ecological and sedimentary determinants.

Stratigraphic patterns of last occurrences (LOs) of fossil taxa potentially fingerprint mass extinctions and delineate rates and geometries of those events. Although empirical studies of mass extinctions recognize that random sampling causes LOs to occur earlier than the time of extinction (Signor-Lipps effect), sequence stratigraphic controls on the position of LOs are rarely considered. By tracing stratigraphic ranges of extant mollusc species preserved in the Holocene succession of the Po coastal plain (Italy), we demonstrated that, if mass extinction took place today, complex but entirely false extinction patterns would be recorded regionally due to shifts in local community composition and non-random variation in the abundance of skeletal remains, both controlled by relative sea-level changes. Consequently, rather than following an apparent gradual pattern expected from the Signor-Lipps effect, LOs concentrated within intervals of stratigraphic condensation and strong facies shifts mimicking sudden extinction pulses. Methods assuming uniform recovery potential of fossils falsely supported stepwise extinction patterns among studied species and systematically underestimated their stratigraphic ranges. Such effects of stratigraphic architecture, co-produced by ecological, sedimentary and taphonomic processes, can easily confound interpretations of the timing, duration and selectivity of mass extinction events. Our results highlight the necessity of accounting for palaeoenvironmental and sequence stratigraphic context when inferring extinction dynamics from the fossil record.

Differential responses of marine communities to natural and anthropogenic changes.

Responses of ecosystems to environmental changes vary greatly across habitats, organisms and observational scales. The Quaternary fossil record of the Po Basin demonstrates that marine communities of the northern Adriatic re-emerged unchanged following the most recent glaciation, which lasted approximately 100,000 years. The Late Pleistocene and Holocene interglacial ecosystems were both dominated by the same species, species turnover rates approximated predictions of resampling models of a homogeneous system, and comparable bathymetric gradients in species composition, sample-level diversity, dominance and specimen abundance were observed in both time intervals. The interglacial Adriatic ecosystems appear to have been impervious to natural climate change either owing to their persistence during those long-term perturbations or their resilient recovery during interglacial phases of climate oscillations. By contrast, present-day communities of the northern Adriatic differ notably from their Holocene counterparts. The recent ecosystem shift stands in contrast to the long-term endurance of interglacial communities in face of climate-driven environmental changes.

Jackknife-corrected parametric bootstrap estimates of growth rates in bivalve mollusks using nearest living relatives.

Quantitative estimates of growth rates can augment ecological and paleontological applications of body-size data. However, in contrast to body-size estimates, assessing growth rates is often time-consuming, expensive, or unattainable. Here we use an indirect approach, a jackknife-corrected parametric bootstrap, for efficient approximation of growth rates using nearest living relatives with known age-size relationships. The estimate is developed by (1) collecting a sample of published growth rates of closely related species, (2) calculating the average growth curve using those published age-size relationships, (3) resampling iteratively these empirically known growth curves to estimate the standard errors and confidence bands around the average growth curve, and (4) applying the resulting estimate of uncertainty to bracket age-size relationships of the species of interest. This approach was applied to three monophyletic families (Donacidae, Mactridae, and Semelidae) of mollusk bivalves, a group characterized by indeterministic shell growth, but widely used in ecological, paleontological, and geochemical research. The resulting indirect estimates were tested against two previously published geochemical studies and, in both cases, yielded highly congruent age estimates. In addition, a case study in applied fisheries was used to illustrate the potential of the proposed approach for augmenting aquaculture management practices. The resulting estimates of growth rates place body size data in a constrained temporal context and confidence intervals associated with resampling estimates allow for assessing the statistical uncertainty around derived temporal ranges. The indirect approach should allow for improved evaluation of diverse research questions, from sustainability of industrial shellfish harvesting to climatic interpretations of stable isotope proxies extracted from fossil skeletons.