Geological Society of America

T261 Terrestrial Ecosystem Disturbance through Geologic Time

Wednesday, 12 October 2022
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Mile High Ballroom 4B

DECOUPLED TERRESTRIAL AND MARINE ECOLOGICAL RECOVERY AFTER THE END-TRIASSIC MASS EXTINCTION

Paper number: T261-5
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 2:20 PM – 2:35 PM

Authors

Alison Cribb Presenting Author
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Philip-peter Maxeiner
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Yun-Hsin Wu
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, CA
Frank Corsetti
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
David Bottjer
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Kiersten Formoso
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, CA
Kiersten Formoso
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Charles Woolley
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, CA
Charles Woolley
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
James Beech
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Shannon Brophy
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Paul J. Byrne
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Victoria Cassady
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Amanda Godbold
University of Southern California, Calgary, AB
Ekaterina Larina
University of Texas - Austin, Austin, TX
Ekaterina Larina
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA

Abstract

Constructing trends in functional diversity through mass extinction intervals is critical for understanding how ecosystems have responded to major environmental perturbations throughout Earth history. Ecospace analyses, which classify organisms in a multivariate space according to their ecological traits, have proven particularly useful for reconstructing changes in ecological structure and functional recovery through Phanerozoic mass extinctions. Specifically, marine ecospace analyses that categorize animals according to tiering, feeding behavior, and motility traits have previously been used to understand how marine ecosystems have changed through mass extinction intervals. However, no analogous ecospace methodology exists for the terrestrial fossil record, limiting comparable studies of terrestrial and marine functional ecology, as well as our general understanding of how terrestrial and marine ecosystems respond differently to climate change.

We developed a novel terrestrial ecospace method which, like the traditional marine ecospace, classifies animals in terms of their tiering, feeding, and motility traits. We applied the marine and terrestrial ecospace analyses to fossil occurrences in the Paleobiology Database (PBDB) across the end-Triassic mass extinction (ETME). Each genus that occurs in the PBDB between the Norian (Triassic) to the Toarcian (Jurassic) was assigned an ecospace functional group according to its tiering, feeding, and motility traits. We conducted stage-level analyses of diversity, extinction intensity, and ecological structure to address how terrestrial and marine ecosystems compare in recovery during the Early Jurassic in the wake of the ETME. In stark contrast with marine ecosystems, we find that terrestrial ecosystems exhibit an observable decrease in functional diversity around the ETME, with the majority of functional groups experiencing high taxonomic turnover within functional groups and high ecological dissimilarity persisting through the Jurassic. We conclude that terrestrial ecosystems are particularly ecologically sensitive to the environmental perturbations associated with the ETME, causing early significant functional ecology instability which inhibited early recovery in Jurassic terrestrial ecosystems.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 54, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2022AM-379759

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