Skip to main content

Main menu

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • 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
  • 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
  • Log in
  • My Cart

Advanced Search

  • Home
  • Articles
    • Current
    • Special Feature Articles - Most Recent
    • Special Features
    • Colloquia
    • Collected Articles
    • PNAS Classics
    • List of Issues
  • Front Matter
    • Front Matter Portal
    • Journal Club
  • 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
Research Article

Diversity partitioning during the Cambrian radiation

Lin Na and Wolfgang Kiessling
  1. aGeoZentrum Nordbayern, Paleobiology and Paleoenvironments, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91054 Erlangen, Germany; and
  2. bMuseum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity at the Humboldt University Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany

See allHide authors and affiliations

PNAS first published March 30, 2015; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1424985112
Lin Na
aGeoZentrum Nordbayern, Paleobiology and Paleoenvironments, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91054 Erlangen, Germany; and
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • For correspondence: na-lin13@hotmail.com
Wolfgang Kiessling
aGeoZentrum Nordbayern, Paleobiology and Paleoenvironments, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91054 Erlangen, Germany; and
bMuseum für Naturkunde, Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity at the Humboldt University Berlin, 10115 Berlin, Germany
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  1. Edited by Douglas H. Erwin, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, and accepted by the Editorial Board March 10, 2015 (received for review January 2, 2015)

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

Significance

Many mechanisms of the Cambrian Explosion have been proposed, but rigorous quantitative analyses of biodiversity dynamics are scarce, although they may shed light on important factors. Using a comprehensive database and sampling standardization, we dissect global diversity patterns. The trajectories of within-community, between-community, and global diversity during the main phase of the Cambrian radiation revealed a low-competition model, which was probably governed by niche contraction and the increase of predation at local scales. At continental scales, the increase of beta diversity was controlled by the high rate of community turnover among adjacent continents. This finding supports the general importance of plate tectonics in large-scale diversifications.

Abstract

The fossil record offers unique insights into the environmental and geographic partitioning of biodiversity during global diversifications. We explored biodiversity patterns during the Cambrian radiation, the most dramatic radiation in Earth history. We assessed how the overall increase in global diversity was partitioned between within-community (alpha) and between-community (beta) components and how beta diversity was partitioned among environments and geographic regions. Changes in gamma diversity in the Cambrian were chiefly driven by changes in beta diversity. The combined trajectories of alpha and beta diversity during the initial diversification suggest low competition and high predation within communities. Beta diversity has similar trajectories both among environments and geographic regions, but turnover between adjacent paleocontinents was probably the main driver of diversification. Our study elucidates that global biodiversity during the Cambrian radiation was driven by niche contraction at local scales and vicariance at continental scales. The latter supports previous arguments for the importance of plate tectonics in the Cambrian radiation, namely the breakup of Pannotia.

  • Cambrian radiation
  • alpha diversity
  • beta diversity
  • low competition
  • Pannotia

Footnotes

  • ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: na-lin13{at}hotmail.com.
  • Author contributions: L.N. and W.K. designed research, performed research, analyzed data, and wrote the paper.

  • The authors declare no conflict of interest.

  • This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. D.H.E. is a Guest Editor invited by the Editorial Board.

  • This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1424985112/-/DCSupplemental.

Next
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.
Diversity partitioning during the Cambrian radiation
(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
The Cambrian Explosion
Lin Na, Wolfgang Kiessling
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2015, 201424985; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1424985112

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
Request Permissions
Share
The Cambrian Explosion
Lin Na, Wolfgang Kiessling
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2015, 201424985; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1424985112
del.icio.us logo Digg logo Reddit logo Twitter logo CiteULike logo Facebook logo Google logo Mendeley logo
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Mendeley logo Mendeley
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: 118 (14)
Current Issue

Submit

Sign up for Article Alerts

Jump to section

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

You May Also be Interested in

Smoke emanates from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power plant a few days after tsunami damage
Core Concept: Muography offers a new way to see inside a multitude of objects
Muons penetrate much further than X-rays, they do essentially zero damage, and they are provided for free by the cosmos.
Image credit: Science Source/Digital Globe.
Water from a faucet fills a glass.
News Feature: How “forever chemicals” might impair the immune system
Researchers are exploring whether these ubiquitous fluorinated molecules might worsen infections or hamper vaccine effectiveness.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Dmitry Naumov.
Venus flytrap captures a fly.
Journal Club: Venus flytrap mechanism could shed light on how plants sense touch
One protein seems to play a key role in touch sensitivity for flytraps and other meat-eating plants.
Image credit: Shutterstock/Kuttelvaserova Stuchelova.
Illustration of groups of people chatting
Exploring the length of human conversations
Adam Mastroianni and Daniel Gilbert explore why conversations almost never end when people want them to.
Listen
Past PodcastsSubscribe
Panda bear hanging in a tree
How horse manure helps giant pandas tolerate cold
A study finds that giant pandas roll in horse manure to increase their cold tolerance.
Image credit: Fuwen Wei.

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
  • Subscribers
  • Librarians
  • Press
  • Cozzarelli Prize
  • Site Map
  • PNAS Updates
  • FAQs
  • Accessibility Statement
  • Rights & Permissions
  • About
  • Contact

Feedback    Privacy/Legal

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