T67 Co-Evolution of Life and Planet: Broad–Scale Controls on Biodiversity II

Sunday, 1 November 2015
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Room 314

TROPICAL OSTRACOD DIVERSITY AND PALEOBIOGEOGRAPHY IN THE INDO-PACIFIC

Paper number: T67-10
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 3:45 PM – 4:00 PM

Authors

Abstract

The Southeast Asian shallow marine area situated between the Indian and Pacific Oceans currently exhibits incredible marine biodiversity, and is well known as the Coral Triangle or the Indo-Australian Archipelago (IAA) biodiversity hotspot. However, Cenozoic paleobiogeography of this region remains unclear except for larger benthic foraminifera, a relatively well-studied tropical taxon. We investigate Cenozoic history of the IAA hotspot using shallow marine Indonesian and Philippine ostracods (Crustacea) from the Mid-Miocene, Pliocene and Pleistocene. A diverse, extant class abundantly found and well-preserved in the fossil record, fossil ostracods may indicate community, habitat and environmental changes in the epochs examined. In Mid-Miocene outcrop samples, lower species diversity and fewer individuals were observed compared with those from the Plio-Pleistocene. Further work aims to determine potential factors or contributing mechanisms for this surge in diversity, and to investigate this increase at a finer time scale.