Paleobiolory Seminar: "Sources and Sinks of Marine Biodiversity in Deep and Shallow Time"

Speaker: Dr. Wolfgang Kiessling (Erlangen, Germany)

Abstract:

Identifying regions and environmental settings in which the rates of evolution are greater or lower than average is a major quest in macroevolution. Most commonly, areas with high biodiversity are interpreted as cradles of evolution whereas areas with lower biodiversity are seen as museums. The out-of-the tropics dynamic discovered for Neogene bivalves is a manifestation of cradles being also sources of biodiversity for other regions. In deep time, similar dynamics are evident for coral reefs, shallow water, and calcium carbonate substrates. In shallow time, sources and sinks of biodiversity are linked to the velocity of climate change. Sources are regions of rapidly diverging isotherms whereas sinks are regions where isotherms converge. My talk will highlight how these observations might be linked to produce large-scale spatial patterns of biodiversity in the oceans.