Evidence for Trait-Based Dominance in Occupancy among Fossil Taxa and the Decoupling of Macroecological and Macroevolutionary Success

Abstract

Online enhancements: supplementary materials.abstract: Biological systems provide examples of differential success among taxa, from ecosystems with a few dominant species (ecological success) to clades that possess far more species than sister clades (macroevolutionary success). Macroecological success, the occupation by a species or clade of an unusually high number of areas, has received less attention. If macroecological success reflects heritable traits, then successful species should be related. Genera composed of species possessing those traits should occupy more areas than genera with comparable species richness that lack such traits. Alternatively, if macroecological success reflects autapomorphic traits, then generic occupancy should be a by-product of species richness among genera and occupancy of constituent species. We test this using Phanerozoic marine invertebrates. Although temporal patterns of species and generic occupancy are strongly correlated, inequality in generic occupancy typically is greater than expected. Genus-level patterns cannot be explained solely with species-level patterns. Within individual intervals, deviations between the observed and expected generic occupancy correlate with the number of lithological units (stratigraphic formations), particularly after controlling for geographic range and species richness. However, elevated generic occupancy is unrelated to or negatively associated with either generic geographic ranges or within-genus species richness. Our results suggest that shared traits among congeneric species encourage shortterm macroecological success without generating short-term macroevolutionary success. A broad niche may confer high occupancy but does not necessarily promote speciation.

Geographic contingency, not species sorting, dominates macroevolutionary dynamics in an extinct clade of neogastropods (Volutospina; Volutidae)

“…While the differences in net diversification rates between non-planktotrophic and planktotrophic Volutospina species were not found to be statistically significant in the present analysis, it is nevertheless possible that increased sample sizes may detect statistically distinguishable speciation and extinction rates or volatility. If increased sampling does suggest a statistically significant difference, then non-planktotrophic lineages, having potentially originated due to organism-level selection, are at greater risk of clade extinction due to macroevolutionary dynamics (Wagner et al 2018); that is, living dead clades walking (Jablonski 2002; Sang et al 2019). Only by examining the fossil and extant members of living clades in phylogenetic context can we properly answer these and other questions of evolutionary ecology (Lamsdell et al 2017).…”

The greatest hits of all time: the histories of dominant genera in the fossil record

“…Twenty studies contributed more than 1400 records each (King 1931; Reed 1944; Gardner 1947; Besairie and Collignon 1972; Cooper and Grant 1977; Toulmin 1977; Woodring 1982; Sohl and Koch 1983, 1984, 1987; Gitton et al 1986; Manivit et al 1990; Aberhan 1992; Tozer 1994; Jablonski and Raup 1995; Stygall-Rode and Lieberman 2004; Holland and Patzkowsky 2007. A full bibliography is given as in the Supplementary Material (see also Wagner et al 2018).…”

“…For the remaining records, we vet species’ names extensively. This includes checking for misspelling and converting all specific names to gender-neutral versions so that “ umbilicata ,” “ umbilicatus ,” and “ umbilicatum ” all are considered to be the same species name (Wagner et al 2018).…”

“…We control for this by only counting localities from the same formation that were greater than 1 km away from the closest locality from that formation also bearing the species in question. (In cases in which rock units are ranked as members in some papers but formations in others, we used the latest opinions of that unit [Darroch and Wagner 2015; Wagner et al 2018]. ) Thus, if there are three localities from Formation X within 1 km of each other, one “unique” locality is tallied for species occurring at those three localities.…”

Patterns of morphological evolution in the skull of turtles: contributions from digital paleontology, neuroanatomy and biomechanics

“…Additionally, studies of macroecological patterns, e.g. changes in diversity through time associated to morphological traits (Wagner et al 2018) or climatic changes or extinctions (Lowery et al 2018;Ezcurra & Butler 2018), and functional analyses of locomotion using digital models (Pierce et al 2012;Sellers et al 2017;Nyakatura et al 2019) have multiplied in recent years.…”