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Small but mighty: how overlooked small species maintain community structure through middle Eocene climate change

Small but mighty: how overlooked small species maintain community structure through middle Eocene climate change
Small but mighty: how overlooked small species maintain community structure through middle Eocene climate change
Understanding current and future biodiversity responses to changing climate is pivotal as anthropogenic climate change continues. This understanding is complicated by the multitude of available metrics to quantify dynamics and by biased sampling protocols. Here, we investigate the impact of sampling protocol strategies using a data-rich fossil record to calculate effective diversity using Hill numbers for the first time on Paleogene planktonic foraminifera. We sample 22,830 individual tests, in two different size classes, across a 7 Myr time slice of the middle Eocene featuring a major transient warming event, the middle Eocene climatic optimum (MECO; ~40 Ma), at study sites in the midlatitude North Atlantic. Using generalized additive models, we investigate community responses to climatic fluctuations. After correcting for any effects of fossil fragmentation, we show a peak in generic diversity in the early and middle stages of the MECO as well as divergent trajectories between the typical size-selected community (>180 µm) and a broader selection, including smaller genera (>63 µm). Assemblages featuring smaller genera are more resilient to the climatic fluctuations of the MECO than those assemblages that feature only larger genera, maintaining their community structure at the reference Hill numbers for Shannon’s and Simpson’s indices. These results raise fundamental questions about how communities respond to climate excursions. In addition, our results emphasize the need to design studies with the aim of collecting the most inclusive data possible to allow detection of community changes and determine which species are likely to dominate future environments.
0094-8373
Kearns, Lorna
a90251d2-4814-474e-a400-ad9a112bd964
Bohaty, Steven
af9dbe78-8b9f-44f2-ba1d-20795837d2d1
Edgar, Kirsty M
15a6f655-0ec8-431c-b181-2050bacce584
Ezard, Thomas
a143a893-07d0-4673-a2dd-cea2cd7e1374
Kearns, Lorna
a90251d2-4814-474e-a400-ad9a112bd964
Bohaty, Steven
af9dbe78-8b9f-44f2-ba1d-20795837d2d1
Edgar, Kirsty M
15a6f655-0ec8-431c-b181-2050bacce584
Ezard, Thomas
a143a893-07d0-4673-a2dd-cea2cd7e1374

Kearns, Lorna, Bohaty, Steven, Edgar, Kirsty M and Ezard, Thomas (2022) Small but mighty: how overlooked small species maintain community structure through middle Eocene climate change. Paleobiology. (doi:10.1017/pab.2022.24).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Understanding current and future biodiversity responses to changing climate is pivotal as anthropogenic climate change continues. This understanding is complicated by the multitude of available metrics to quantify dynamics and by biased sampling protocols. Here, we investigate the impact of sampling protocol strategies using a data-rich fossil record to calculate effective diversity using Hill numbers for the first time on Paleogene planktonic foraminifera. We sample 22,830 individual tests, in two different size classes, across a 7 Myr time slice of the middle Eocene featuring a major transient warming event, the middle Eocene climatic optimum (MECO; ~40 Ma), at study sites in the midlatitude North Atlantic. Using generalized additive models, we investigate community responses to climatic fluctuations. After correcting for any effects of fossil fragmentation, we show a peak in generic diversity in the early and middle stages of the MECO as well as divergent trajectories between the typical size-selected community (>180 µm) and a broader selection, including smaller genera (>63 µm). Assemblages featuring smaller genera are more resilient to the climatic fluctuations of the MECO than those assemblages that feature only larger genera, maintaining their community structure at the reference Hill numbers for Shannon’s and Simpson’s indices. These results raise fundamental questions about how communities respond to climate excursions. In addition, our results emphasize the need to design studies with the aim of collecting the most inclusive data possible to allow detection of community changes and determine which species are likely to dominate future environments.

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More information

Accepted/In Press date: 20 June 2022
e-pub ahead of print date: 8 August 2022
Published date: 8 August 2022

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 468464
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/468464
ISSN: 0094-8373
PURE UUID: 7e3359be-eac8-4bb0-91ce-e555f0b174e1
ORCID for Lorna Kearns: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-9740-7410
ORCID for Steven Bohaty: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-1193-7398
ORCID for Thomas Ezard: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0001-8305-6605

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Date deposited: 16 Aug 2022 16:34
Last modified: 22 Jun 2024 01:46

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Contributors

Author: Lorna Kearns ORCID iD
Author: Steven Bohaty ORCID iD
Author: Kirsty M Edgar
Author: Thomas Ezard ORCID iD

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