Woodhouse, AD, Proctor, FA, Jackson, SL et al. (4 more authors) (2023) Paleoecology and evolutionary response of planktonic foraminifera to the mid-Pliocene Warm Period and Plio-Pleistocene bipolar ice sheet expansion. Biogeosciences, 20 (1). pp. 121-139. ISSN 1726-4170
Abstract
The Pliocene-Recent is associated with many important climatic and paleoceanographic changes, which have shaped the biotic and abiotic nature of the modern world. The closure of the Central American Seaway and the development and intensification of Northern Hemisphere ice sheets had profound global impacts on the latitudinal and vertical structure of the oceans, triggering the extinction and radiation of many marine groups. In particular, marine calcifying planktonic foraminifera, which are highly sensitive to water column structure, exhibited a series of extinctions as global temperatures fell. By analyzing high-resolution (∼ 5 kyr) sedimentary records from the Eastern Equatorial Pacific Ocean, complemented with global records from the novel Triton dataset, we document the biotic changes in this microfossil group, within which three species displayed isochronous co-extinction, and species with cold-water affinity increased in dominance as meridional temperature gradients steepened. We suggest that these changes were associated with the terminal stages of the closure of the Central American Seaway, where following the sustained warmth of the mid-Pliocene Warm Period, bipolar ice sheet expansion initiated a world in which cold- and deep-dwelling species became increasingly more successful. Such global-scale paleoecological and macroevolutionary variations between the Pliocene and the modern icehouse climate would suggest significant deviations from pre-industrial baselines within modern and future marine plankton communities as anthropogenic climate forcing continues.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Earth Surface Science Institute (ESSI) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/S008853/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 12 Jan 2023 17:08 |
Last Modified: | 12 Jan 2023 17:12 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Copernicus Publications |
Identification Number: | 10.5194/bg-20-121-2023 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:195041 |