An early burst in brachiopod evolution corresponding with significant climatic shifts during the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event.

We employ modified tip-dating methods to date divergence times within the Strophomenoidea, one of the most abundant and species-rich brachiopod clades to radiate during the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), to determine if significant environmental changes at this time correlate with the diversification of the clade. Models using origination, extinction and sampling rates to estimate prior probabilities of divergence times strongly support both high rates of anatomical change per million years and rapid divergences shortly before the clade first appears in the fossil record. These divergence times indicate much higher rates of cladogenesis than are typical of brachiopods during this interval. The correspondence of high speciation rates and high anatomical disparity suggests punctuated (speciational) change drove the high frequencies of early anatomical change, which in turn suggests increased ecological opportunities rather than shifting developmental constraints account for high rates of anatomical change. The pulse of rapid evolution began coincident with cooling temperatures, the start of major oscillations in sea level and increased levels of atmospheric oxygen. Our results suggest that these factors permitted major geographical and ecological expansion of strophomenoids with intervals of geographical isolation, resulting in elevated speciation rates and corresponding elevated frequencies of punctuated change.

Phylogenetic Paleoecology: Tree-Thinking and Ecology in Deep Time.

The new and emerging field of phylogenetic paleoecology leverages the evolutionary relationships among species to explain temporal and spatial changes in species diversity, abundance, and distribution in deep time. This field is poised for rapid progress as knowledge of the evolutionary relationships among fossil species continues to expand. In particular, this approach will lend new insights to many of the longstanding questions in evolutionary biology, such as: the relationships among character change, ecology, and evolutionary rates; the processes that determine the evolutionary relationships among species within communities and along environmental gradients; and the phylogenetic signal underlying ecological selectivity in background and mass extinctions and in major evolutionary radiations.

Phylogenetic Clustering of Origination and Extinction across the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction.

Mass extinctions can have dramatic effects on the trajectory of life, but in some cases the effects can be relatively small even when extinction rates are high. For example, the Late Ordovician mass extinction is the second most severe in terms of the proportion of genera eliminated, yet is noted for the lack of ecological consequences and shifts in clade dominance. By comparison, the end-Cretaceous mass extinction was less severe but eliminated several major clades while some rare surviving clades diversified in the Paleogene. This disconnect may be better understood by incorporating the phylogenetic relatedness of taxa into studies of mass extinctions, as the factors driving extinction and recovery are thought to be phylogenetically conserved and should therefore promote both origination and extinction of closely related taxa. Here, we test whether there was phylogenetic selectivity in extinction and origination using brachiopod genera from the Middle Ordovician through the Devonian. Using an index of taxonomic clustering (RCL) as a proxy for phylogenetic clustering, we find that A) both extinctions and originations shift from taxonomically random or weakly clustered within families in the Ordovician to strongly clustered in the Silurian and Devonian, beginning with the recovery following the Late Ordovician mass extinction, and B) the Late Ordovician mass extinction was itself only weakly clustered. Both results stand in stark contrast to Cretaceous-Cenozoic bivalves, which showed significant levels of taxonomic clustering of extinctions in the Cretaceous, including strong clustering in the mass extinction, but taxonomically random extinctions in the Cenozoic. The contrasting patterns between the Late Ordovician and end-Cretaceous events suggest a complex relationship between the phylogenetic selectivity of mass extinctions and the long-term phylogenetic signal in origination and extinction patterns.

Phanerozoic trends in the global diversity of marine invertebrates.

It has previously been thought that there was a steep Cretaceous and Cenozoic radiation of marine invertebrates. This pattern can be replicated with a new data set of fossil occurrences representing 3.5 million specimens, but only when older analytical protocols are used. Moreover, analyses that employ sampling standardization and more robust counting methods show a modest rise in diversity with no clear trend after the mid-Cretaceous. Globally, locally, and at both high and low latitudes, diversity was less than twice as high in the Neogene as in the mid-Paleozoic. The ratio of global to local richness has changed little, and a latitudinal diversity gradient was present in the early Paleozoic.