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Not always safety in numbers when it comes to extinction risk by wwy yrj
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Not always safety in numbers when it comes to extinction risk by WWY YRJ
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| Article Posted: 07/04/2012 |
| Article Views: 89 |
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Not always safety in numbers when it comes to extinction risk |
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Business,Business News,Business Opportunities
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A team of scientists analyzed more than 46,000 fossils from 52sites and found that greater numbers did indeed help clam-likebrachiopods survive the Ordovician extinction, which killed offapproximately half of Earth's life forms some 444 million yearsago. Surprisingly, abundance did not help brachiopod speciespersist for extended periods outside of the extinction event. Study co-author Steven Holland, a professor of geology in the UGAFranklin College of Arts and Sciences, said the seeminglyparadoxical finding suggests that predicting which species are atrisk of extinction is an extremely dicey endeavor. "This study shows that extinction is much more complicatedthan generally realized," said Holland, whose findings appearin the current issue of the journal Paleobiology.
"It turns out that a lot of extinction events areidiosyncratic; there are a specific set of circumstances that cometogether and dictate whether something goes or doesn't." Holland and co-author Andrew Zaffos, a former master's student atUGA, examined fossils from the Cincinnati Arch, a racetrack-shapedgeologic feature that arcs around southeastern Indiana, northernKentucky and southwestern Ohio. The region is known in geologycircles as one of the most fossil-rich areas on the planet.Brachiopods are numerous and well preserved there, making them anideal group of animals to test the link between abundance andextinction. The researchers looked at nearly 30 different genera -- a step upfrom species on the biological classification scale -- ofbrachiopods and classified them based on whether or not theysurvived the Ordovician extinction as well as by their globaldurations. They found a link between abundance and survivorship ofthe extinction event, but there was no correlation betweenabundance and duration. In fact, members of rarer genera were morelikely to be present longer in the fossil record.
Zaffos, who is currently pursuing a doctorate at the University ofCincinnati, noted that the counterintuitive results highlight theunique contribution that understanding the fossil record brings toconservation. "Many recent studies of extinction by paleobiologists arecoming out with findings that are contrary to what we see in modernenvironments and sometimes even contrary to what otherpaleontologists see in other geologic eras," he said. "Ithink this is why paleobiology is so important-it's the only wayfor us to examine ecology at multiple points in the Earth'shistory, when perhaps the environmental and biological settingswere different enough that even our most intuitive expectationsdon't hold." In a related study published in the same edition of Paleobiology , Holland tackled another widely held theory about extinction --that rising sea levels encourage the diversification of new speciesby increasing the amount of available shallow-water habitat. Hemodeled nine diverse global locations and found that sea level risedoes not consistently increase habitable area, with differentcoasts and different habitats displaying substantially differentchanges in area for the same amount of sea level fluctuation. Holland admitted that his findings are a bit disheartening.
Theplanet is currently in the midst of an extinction event caused byhuman-induced habitat loss and global warming, and scientists wouldlike to be able to predict which species are most at risk so thatscarce resources can be put toward their conservation. "You really want to be able to make some predictions aboutextinction risk so that you can guide policies," Holland said,"and if the selectivity of extinction is much morecomplicated, it makes it harder to generate those rules." Holland's research is supported by the National Science Foundation.Zaffos' research was supported by the Paleontological Society, theGeological Society of America and the University of Georgia'sMiriam Watts-Wheeler Fund. I am an expert from Consumer Electronics, usually analyzes all kind of industries situation, such as dual tape decks , dash strobe lights.
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