Skip to main content
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian
  • Log in
  • My Cart

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses
  • Submit
  • About
    • Editorial Board
    • PNAS Staff
    • FAQ
    • Accessibility Statement
    • Rights and Permissions
    • Site Map
  • Contact
  • Journal Club
  • Subscribe
    • Subscription Rates
    • Subscriptions FAQ
    • Open Access
    • Recommend PNAS to Your Librarian

User menu

  • Log in
  • My Cart

Search

  • Advanced search
Home
Home

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
  • News
    • For the Press
    • This Week In PNAS
    • PNAS in the News
  • Podcasts
  • Authors
    • Information for Authors
    • Editorial and Journal Policies
    • Submission Procedures
    • Fees and Licenses

New Research In

Physical Sciences

Featured Portals

  • Physics
  • Chemistry
  • Sustainability Science

Articles by Topic

  • Applied Mathematics
  • Applied Physical Sciences
  • Astronomy
  • Computer Sciences
  • Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
  • Engineering
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Mathematics
  • Statistics

Social Sciences

Featured Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Sustainability Science

Articles by Topic

  • Economic Sciences
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Political Sciences
  • Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
  • Social Sciences

Biological Sciences

Featured Portals

  • Sustainability Science

Articles by Topic

  • Agricultural Sciences
  • Anthropology
  • Applied Biological Sciences
  • Biochemistry
  • Biophysics and Computational Biology
  • Cell Biology
  • Developmental Biology
  • Ecology
  • Environmental Sciences
  • Evolution
  • Genetics
  • Immunology and Inflammation
  • Medical Sciences
  • Microbiology
  • Neuroscience
  • Pharmacology
  • Physiology
  • Plant Biology
  • Population Biology
  • Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
  • Sustainability Science
  • Systems Biology
Research Article

Quantifying ecological impacts of mass extinctions with network analysis of fossil communities

A. D. Muscente, Anirudh Prabhu, Hao Zhong, Ahmed Eleish, Michael B. Meyer, Peter Fox, Robert M. Hazen, and Andrew H. Knoll
PNAS May 15, 2018 115 (20) 5217-5222; first published April 23, 2018; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1719976115
A. D. Muscente
aDepartment of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: muscente@g.harvard.edu aknoll@oeb.harvard.edu
Anirudh Prabhu
bDepartment of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Jonsson-Rowland Science Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Hao Zhong
bDepartment of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Jonsson-Rowland Science Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Ahmed Eleish
bDepartment of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Jonsson-Rowland Science Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Michael B. Meyer
cGeophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, DC 20015
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Peter Fox
bDepartment of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Jonsson-Rowland Science Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Robert M. Hazen
cGeophysical Laboratory, Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, DC 20015
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Andrew H. Knoll
aDepartment of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138;
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: muscente@g.harvard.edu aknoll@oeb.harvard.edu
  1. Contributed by Andrew H. Knoll, March 20, 2018 (sent for review November 15, 2017; reviewed by Mary L. Droser and Seth Finnegan)

  • Article
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF
Loading

Significance

The geologic record provides evidence of repeated diversification events and mass extinctions, which entailed benchmark changes in biodiversity and ecology. For insights into these events, we explore the fossil record of marine animal communities using a network-based approach to quantifying ecological change over time. The major radiations and mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic Eon resulted in the biggest ecological changes, as they involved the rise and decline of interrelated communities in relative dominance. Our analyses provide support for an ecological severity ranking of mass extinctions and illuminate the long-term consequences of the Ordovician radiation and Devonian mass depletion of biodiversity. Our work highlights the potential for irreversible ecosystem changes with species losses, both previously documented and predicted in the future.

Abstract

Mass extinctions documented by the fossil record provide critical benchmarks for assessing changes through time in biodiversity and ecology. Efforts to compare biotic crises of the past and present, however, encounter difficulty because taxonomic and ecological changes are decoupled, and although various metrics exist for describing taxonomic turnover, no methods have yet been proposed to quantify the ecological impacts of extinction events. To address this issue, we apply a network-based approach to exploring the evolution of marine animal communities over the Phanerozoic Eon. Network analysis of fossil co-occurrence data enables us to identify nonrandom associations of interrelated paleocommunities. These associations, or evolutionary paleocommunities, dominated total diversity during successive intervals of relative community stasis. Community turnover occurred largely during mass extinctions and radiations, when ecological reorganization resulted in the decline of one association and the rise of another. Altogether, we identify five evolutionary paleocommunities at the generic and familial levels in addition to three ordinal associations that correspond to Sepkoski’s Cambrian, Paleozoic, and Modern evolutionary faunas. In this context, we quantify magnitudes of ecological change by measuring shifts in the representation of evolutionary paleocommunities over geologic time. Our work shows that the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event had the largest effect on ecology, followed in descending order by the Permian–Triassic, Cretaceous–Paleogene, Devonian, and Triassic–Jurassic mass extinctions. Despite its taxonomic severity, the Ordovician extinction did not strongly affect co-occurrences of taxa, affirming its limited ecological impact. Network paleoecology offers promising approaches to exploring ecological consequences of extinctions and radiations.

  • mass extinction
  • paleoecology
  • network
  • evolutionary fauna
  • biodiversification

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: muscente{at}g.harvard.edu or aknoll{at}oeb.harvard.edu.
  • Author contributions: A.D.M., M.B.M., P.F., R.M.H., and A.H.K. designed research; A.D.M., A.P., H.Z., A.E., M.B.M., and P.F. performed research; A.D.M., A.P., H.Z., and A.E. analyzed data; and A.D.M., R.M.H., and A.H.K. wrote the paper.

  • Reviewers: M.L.D., University of California, Riverside; and S.F., University of California, Berkeley.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1719976115/-/DCSupplemental.

  • Copyright © 2018 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.

This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).

View Full Text
PreviousNext
Back to top
Article Alerts
Email Article

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word on PNAS.

NOTE: We only request your email address so that the person you are recommending the page to knows that you wanted them to see it, and that it is not junk mail. We do not capture any email address.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Quantifying ecological impacts of mass extinctions with network analysis of fossil communities
(Your Name) has sent you a message from PNAS
(Your Name) thought you would like to see the PNAS web site.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Citation Tools
Quantifying ecological impacts of mass extinctions with network analysis of fossil communities
A. D. Muscente, Anirudh Prabhu, Hao Zhong, Ahmed Eleish, Michael B. Meyer, Peter Fox, Robert M. Hazen, Andrew H. Knoll
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 2018, 115 (20) 5217-5222; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1719976115

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
Quantifying ecological impacts of mass extinctions with network analysis of fossil communities
A. D. Muscente, Anirudh Prabhu, Hao Zhong, Ahmed Eleish, Michael B. Meyer, Peter Fox, Robert M. Hazen, Andrew H. Knoll
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 2018, 115 (20) 5217-5222; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1719976115
Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 115 (20)
Table of Contents

Submit

Sign up for Article Alerts

Article Classifications

  • Biological Sciences
  • Evolution
  • Physical Sciences
  • Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences

Jump to section

  • Article
    • Abstract
    • Network Analysis
    • Phanerozoic Fossil Networks
    • Implications of Network Paleoecology for Mass Extinctions
    • Conclusions
    • Methods
    • Acknowledgments
    • Footnotes
    • References
  • Figures & SI
  • Info & Metrics
  • PDF

You May Also be Interested in

Surgeons hands during surgery
Inner Workings: Advances in infectious disease treatment promise to expand the pool of donor organs
Despite myriad challenges, clinicians see room for progress.
Image credit: Shutterstock/David Tadevosian.
Setting sun over a sun-baked dirt landscape
Core Concept: Popular integrated assessment climate policy models have key caveats
Better explicating the strengths and shortcomings of these models will help refine projections and improve transparency in the years ahead.
Image credit: Witsawat.S.
Double helix
Journal Club: Noncoding DNA shown to underlie function, cause limb malformations
Using CRISPR, researchers showed that a region some used to label “junk DNA” has a major role in a rare genetic disorder.
Image credit: Nathan Devery.
Steamboat Geyser eruption.
Eruption of Steamboat Geyser
Mara Reed and Michael Manga explore why Yellowstone's Steamboat Geyser resumed erupting in 2018.
Listen
Past PodcastsSubscribe
Multi-color molecular model
Enzymatic breakdown of PET plastic
A study demonstrates how two enzymes—MHETase and PETase—work synergistically to depolymerize the plastic pollutant PET.
Image credit: Aaron McGeehan (artist).

Similar Articles

Site Logo
Powered by HighWire
  • Submit Manuscript
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • RSS Feeds
  • Email Alerts

Articles

  • Current Issue
  • Special Feature Articles – Most Recent
  • List of Issues

PNAS Portals

  • Anthropology
  • Chemistry
  • Classics
  • Front Matter
  • Physics
  • Sustainability Science
  • Teaching Resources

Information

  • Authors
  • Editorial Board
  • Reviewers
  • Librarians
  • Press
  • Site Map
  • PNAS Updates

Feedback    Privacy/Legal

Copyright © 2021 National Academy of Sciences. Online ISSN 1091-6490