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Huang Y, Chen ZQ, Roopnarine PD, Benton MJ, Zhao L, Feng X, Li Z. The stability and collapse of marine ecosystems during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. Curr Biol 2023; 33:1059-1070.e4. [PMID: 36841237 DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2023.02.007] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/09/2022] [Revised: 11/20/2022] [Accepted: 02/01/2023] [Indexed: 02/27/2023]
Abstract
The history of Earth's biodiversity is punctuated episodically by mass extinctions. These are characterized by major declines of taxon richness, but the accompanying ecological collapse has rarely been evaluated quantitatively. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction (PTME; ∼252 mya), as the greatest known extinction, permanently altered marine ecosystems and paved the way for the transition from Paleozoic to Mesozoic evolutionary faunas. Thus, the PTME offers a window into the relationship between taxon richness and ecological dynamics of ecosystems during a severe extinction. However, the accompanying ecological collapse through the PTME has not been evaluated in detail. Here, using food-web models and a marine paleocommunity dataset spanning the PTME, we show that after the first extinction phase, community stability decreased only slightly despite the loss of more than half of taxonomic diversity, while community stability significantly decreased in the second phase. Thus, taxonomic and ecological changes were unequivocally decoupled, with species richness declining severely ∼61 ka earlier than the collapse of marine ecosystem stability, implying that in major catastrophes, a biodiversity crash may be the harbinger of a more devastating ecosystem collapse.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yuangeng Huang
- State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), 68 Jincheng Street, Wuhan 430078, China; Department of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology, California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Drive, San Francisco, CA 94118, USA
| | - Zhong-Qiang Chen
- State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), 68 Jincheng Street, Wuhan 430078, China.
| | - Peter D Roopnarine
- State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), 68 Jincheng Street, Wuhan 430078, China; Department of Invertebrate Zoology and Geology, California Academy of Sciences, 55 Music Concourse Drive, San Francisco, CA 94118, USA
| | - Michael J Benton
- School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Queens Road, Bristol BS8 1RJ, UK
| | - Laishi Zhao
- State Key Laboratory of Geological Processes and Resource Geology, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), 68 Jincheng Street, Wuhan 430078, China
| | - Xueqian Feng
- State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), 68 Jincheng Street, Wuhan 430078, China
| | - Zhenhua Li
- School of Computer Science, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan), 68 Jincheng Street, Wuhan 430078, China
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Abstract
Extinction of species has been a recurrent phenomenon in the history of our planet, but it was generally outweighed in the course of quite a long geological time by the appearance of new species, except, especially, for the five geologically short times when the so-called “Big Five” mass extinctions occurred. Could the current decline in biodiversity be considered as a signal of an ongoing, human-driven sixth mass extinction? This note briefly examines some issues related to: (i) The hypothesized current extinction rate and the magnitude of contemporary global biodiversity loss; (ii) the challenges of comparing them to the background extinction rate and the magnitude of the past Big Five mass extinction events; (iii) briefly considering the effects of the main anthropogenic stressors on ecosystems, including the risk of the emergence of pandemic diseases. A comparison between the Pleistocene fauna dynamics with the present defaunation process and the cascading effects of recent anthropogenic actions on ecosystem structure and functioning suggests that habitat degradation, ecosystem fragmentation, and alien species introduction are important stressors increasing the negative impact on biodiversity exerted by anthropogenic-driven climate changes and their connected effects. In addition, anthropogenic ecological stressors such as urbanization, landscapes, and wildlife trade, creating new opportunities for virus transmission by augmenting human contact with wild species, are among the main factors triggering pandemic diseases.
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