PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Wagner, Peter J.
AU  - Kosnik, Matthew A.
AU  - Lidgard, Scott
TI  - Abundance Distributions Imply Elevated Complexity of Post-Paleozoic Marine Ecosystems
AID  - 10.1126/science.1133795
DP  - 2006 Nov 24
TA  - Science
PG  - 1289--1292
VI  - 314
IP  - 5803
4099  - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5803/1289.short
4100  - http://science.sciencemag.org/content/314/5803/1289.full
SO  - Science2006 Nov 24; 314
AB  - Likelihood analyses of 1176 fossil assemblages of marine organisms from Phanerozoic (i.e., Cambrian to Recent) assemblages indicate a shift in typical relative-abundance distributions after the Paleozoic. Ecological theory associated with these abundance distributions implies that complex ecosystems are far more common among Meso-Cenozoic assemblages than among the Paleozoic assemblages that preceded them. This transition coincides not with any major change in the way fossils are preserved or collected but with a shift from communities dominated by sessile epifaunal suspension feeders to communities with elevated diversities of mobile and infaunal taxa. This suggests that the end-Permian extinction permanently altered prevailing marine ecosystem structure and precipitated high levels of ecological complexity and alpha diversity in the Meso-Cenozoic.