David Harper
Research Interests
Identifying the most surprising victims of mass extinction events : An example using Late Ordovician brachiopods
Author
Summary, in English
Mass extinction events are recognized by increases in extinction rate and magnitude and, often, by changes in the selectivity of extinction. When considering the selective fingerprint of a particular event, not all taxon extinctions are equally informative: some would be expected even under a ‘background’ selectivity regime, whereas others would not and thus require special explanation. When evaluating possible drivers for the extinction event, the latter group is of particular interest. Here, we introduce a simple method for identifying these most surprising victims of extinction events by training models on background extinction intervals and using these models to make per-taxon assessments of ‘expected’ risk during the extinction interval. As an example, we examine brachiopod genus extinctions during the Late Ordovician Mass Extinction and show that extinction of genera in the deep-water ‘Foliomena fauna’ was particularly unexpected given preceding Late Ordovician extinction patterns.
Department/s
- Lithosphere and Biosphere Science
Publishing year
2017-09-01
Language
English
Publication/Series
Biology letters
Volume
13
Issue
9
Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Royal Society Publishing
Topic
- Geology
Keywords
- Brachiopoda
- Extinction risk
- Extinction selectivity
- Ordovician
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 1744-9561