98 Linking Biodiversity Loss to Environmental Stressors Through Integrated Approaches

Biodiversity crises serve as natural experiments to explore extinction selectivity and ecosystem restructuring. We highlight studies using model-data comparisons to link biodiversity loss with environmental stressors by integrating paleobiology, geochemistry, ecophysiology, and Earth system modeling.

Monday, 20 October 2025
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
HBGCC, 304A

Testing predicted ecological responses to major climate warming

Paper number: 98-12
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:40 AM – 10:55 AM

Authors

Abstract

The impacts of climate change are projected to cause major ecological changes to marine ecosystems, in particular significant declines in body size and the poleward migration of species have been forecasted. One way to test these predictions is to utilize the rock and fossil records, which preserve a wealth of data to infer ecosystem response to climate change events at different rates and magnitudes, highlighting spatial and temporal variations of such response. Here, we use the Permian–Triassic successions to explore body-size dynamics and the latitudinal migration of marine ectotherms and single-celled organisms during a high-rate and high-magnitude climate-warming event. Our research shows that the Permian–Triassic successions are challenging to utilize for exploring these relationships, because of high extinction rates making it difficult to track species before, during and after the climate warming. Nevertheless, marine species that survived the climate warming were found in four study areas (Svalbard, Italy, Turkey and South China). Our results reveal that: (1) three bivalve, one gastropod and three ostracod species from equatorial paleolatitudes did not show a decline in body size in response to this climate event, (2) two foraminifera species do show a decline in body size that can be related to temperature and nutrient stress, and (3) many species from multiple marine groups migrated towards the poles, whilst maintaining their pre-warming body size. Together, this shows that the predicted response to climate warming cannot be falsified, but is clearly more nuanced than currently thought.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-412010

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