Does global diversity mean anything?

Abstract

A major goal of paleobiological research since the early 1960s has been the reconstruction in quantitative terms of the history of biological diversity. Spearheaded by Valentine (1969), Raup (1972, 1976a, b), and Sepkoski (1979, 1981, 1984, 1990, 1993), this effort has yielded estimates of global diversity through time, as well as calculations of global rates and magnitudes of extinction and diversification. A consensus emerging in the early 1980s (Sepkoski et al. 1981) indicated that global marine invertebrate diversity rose through the Cambrian and Ordovician periods to a plateau, which with brief extinction-related interruptions was maintained from the mid-Paleozoic to the mid-Mesozoic. Beginning in the Cretaceous, diversity rose again, reaching a peak in the late Neogene. The five mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic, and more or less distinct episodes of diversification, were identified and distinguished from many lesser events (Raup and Sepkoski 1982). Comparable studies, with varying results, were conducted on land vertebrates (Benton 1985, 1989), land plants (Knoll et al. 1979; Niklas et al. 1980, 1983; Tiffney 1981; Knoll 1984), early protistans (Knoll 1994), insects (Labandeira and Sepkoski 1993), and life as a whole (Van Valen 1984, 1985; Van Valen and Maiorana 1985; Signor 1990; Valentine et al. 1991; Benton 1995; Courtillot and Gaudemer 1996; Miller and Foote 1996).

Marine mammals through time: when less is more in studying palaeodiversity

“…It has been argued that diversity patterns are meaningless when measured above the level of the local community (e.g. Vermeij & Leighton 2003) due to the absence of biologically meaningful interactions. This statement needs to be tested for marine mammals, and an investigation into environmental and biological factors, such as sea-level change, temperature or upwelling (Fordyce 1977(Fordyce , 1980Berger 2007) potentially affecting marine mammal palaeodiversity on a global level are currently underway.…”

Diversification and faunal shift of Siluro‐Devonian vertebrates of China

“…A quantitative study of the diversity of early vertebrates in China might provide a broader perspective on the origin and early diversification of vertebrates, and present a new case of the geographically and phylogenetically constrained analysis of diversity, whose signals are likely to be dampered in the analyses that begin on the global scale (Miller 1998;Vermeij and Leighton 2003). Here, with a database we have recently compiled, we present a summary of diversity patterns of early vertebrates from China, discuss the differential responses of their component taxa to physical conditions (e.g.…”

Radiation and extinction: investigating clade dynamics in deep time

“…With the exception of Caniformia (the group that includes dogs and bears), which has lower speciation rates in North America than in Europe, net rates of diversification do not differ between other carnivoran subclades, nor between the two regions. The study by Finarelli & Liow () adds to the growing body of literature demonstrating the importance of examining regional, as well as global, patterns of palaeodiversity (Jackson & Johnson, ; Vermeij & Leighton, ; Mannion et al ., ).…”