A 450 million years long latitudinal gradient in age‐dependent extinction

Silvestro, Daniele; Castiglione, Silvia; Mondanaro, Alessandro; Serio, Carmela; Melchionna, Marina; Piras, Paolo; Febbraro, Mirko Di; Carotenuto, Francesco; Rook, Lorenzo; Raia, Pasquale

doi:10.1111/ele.13441

Cited by 22 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Simulations conducted by Hagen et al (2018) have shown that the method can correctly detect both age-dependency and independence, especially under the conditions of our datasets. Interestingly, Silvestro et al (2020) found that, under certain circumstances, the method used here may bias parameter estimates in the opposite direction, towards shape values larger than one. For a more detailed description of the age-dependent model, see Supporting Information Section 6.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…It is interesting to note that only three of these 25 clades (representing 3 studies) used a model that explicitly takes into account unsampled species. A fourth study investigated a single clade (graptoloids) with a reasonably good fossil record, and a fifth study that analyzed 21 clades used a method that does not explicitly account for unsampled species but was designed to deal with occurrences with low resolution (Silvestro et al 2020). Hence negative age dependency is potentially more prevalent than previously thought.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Re‐evaluation of the “law of constant extinction” for ruminants at different taxonomical scales

Januario

Quental

2021

Evolution

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The "law of constant extinction," proposed by Van Valen, states that long and short-lived taxa have equal chances of going extinct. This pattern of age-independent extinction was originally inferred using the fossil record of several different taxa and relied on survivorship curves built from the literal reading of the fossil record. Van Valen's seminal work was mostly done at higher taxonomic levels, hence its prevalence at the species level could not be directly inferred. The surprisingly few subsequent studies done at the species level have challenged the prevalence of age-independent extinction, but those have, for the most part, failed to explicitly incorporate inherent biases of the fossil record. Using a recent Bayesian framework that accounts for several of those biases, including the fact that very short-living lineages might never make to the record itself, we showed that Ruminantia species present age-dependent extinction, where extinction probability decreases with species age. An analysis at the genus level suggested ageindependent extinction but further examination suggested that the pattern might be more complex than previously reported by Van Valen. Our results indicate that different taxonomic levels may present different extinction regimes, which could justify the development of new macroevolutionary theory and methods.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Re‐evaluation of the “law of constant extinction” for ruminants at different taxonomical scales

Januario

Quental

2021

Evolution

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“…The truncation of all lineages at 126 ka does not affect our extinction rate estimates, if we assume that extinctions are independent of lineage age. Although recent studies have pointed out age-dependent extinction effects (41,44), this process is described to mainly take place on time scales of millions of years and is thus not expected to play a role within the studied time frame.…”

Section: Mammal Extinction Datesmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…More specifically, for each extinct species, we searched our merged database for fossil occurrences from the Middle Pleistocene (0.781 Ma ago) or younger that were dated with at least 10-ka precision. For those species for which we found at least two such database records, we calculated the preservation rate ( q ) using the following formula

where N is the number of fossil occurrences of a given species divided by the time span between the first ( t FO ) and last occurrence ( t LO ) of this species found in the merged database ( 40 , 41 ). The rate q represents the inverse of the average waiting time between two fossils of a taxon (1/ q ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The past and future human impact on mammalian diversity

et al. 2020

Self Cite

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To understand the current biodiversity crisis, it is crucial to determine how humans have affected biodiversity in the past. However, the extent of human involvement in species extinctions from the Late Pleistocene onward remains contentious. Here, we apply Bayesian models to the fossil record to estimate how mammalian extinction rates have changed over the past 126,000 years, inferring specific times of rate increases. We specifically test the hypothesis of human-caused extinctions by using posterior predictive methods. We find that human population size is able to predict past extinctions with 96% accuracy. Predictors based on past climate, in contrast, perform no better than expected by chance, suggesting that climate had a negligible impact on global mammal extinctions. Based on current trends, we predict for the near future a rate escalation of unprecedented magnitude. Our results provide a comprehensive assessment of the human impact on past and predicted future extinctions of mammals.

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Stronger predation intensity and impact on prey communities in the tropics

Freestone

Torchin

Jurgens

et al. 2021

Ecology

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The hypothesis that biotic interactions strengthen toward lower latitudes provides a framework for linking community-scale processes with the macroecological scales that define our biosphere. Despite the importance of this hypothesis for understanding community assembly and ecosystem functioning, the extent to which interaction strength varies across latitude and the effects of this variation on natural communities remain unresolved. Predation in particular is central to ecological and evolutionary dynamics across the globe, yet very few studies explore both community-scale causes and outcomes of predation across latitude. Here we expand beyond prior studies to examine two important components of predation strength: intensity of predation (including multiple dimensions of the predator guild) and impact on prey community biomass and structure, providing one of the most comprehensive examinations of predator-prey interactions across latitude. Using standardized experiments, we tested the hypothesis that predation intensity and impact on prey communities were stronger at lower latitudes. We further assessed prey recruitment to evaluate the potential for this process to mediate predation effects. We used sessile marine invertebrate communities and their fish predators in nearshore environments as a model system, with experiments conducted at 12 sites in four regions spanning the tropics to the subarctic. Our results show clear support for an increase in both predation intensity and impact at lower relative to higher latitudes. The predator guild was more diverse at low latitudes, with higher predation rates, longer interaction durations, and larger predator body sizes, suggesting stronger predation intensity in the tropics. Predation also reduced prey biomass and altered prey composition at low latitudes, with no effects at high latitudes. Although recruitment rates were up to three orders of magnitude higher in the tropics than the subarctic, prey replacement through this process was insufficient to dampen completely the strong impacts of predators in the tropics. Our study provides a novel perspective on the biotic interaction hypothesis, suggesting that multiple components of the predator community likely contribute to predation intensity at low latitudes, with important consequences for the structure of prey communities.

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A 450 million years long latitudinal gradient in age‐dependent extinction

Cited by 22 publications

References 40 publications

Re‐evaluation of the “law of constant extinction” for ruminants at different taxonomical scales

Re‐evaluation of the “law of constant extinction” for ruminants at different taxonomical scales

The past and future human impact on mammalian diversity

Stronger predation intensity and impact on prey communities in the tropics

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