Foster, WJ, Allen, BJ, Kitzmann, NH et al. (7 more authors) (2023) How predictable are mass extinction events? Royal Society Open Science, 10 (3). 221507. ISSN 2054-5703
Abstract
Many modern extinction drivers are shared with past mass extinction events, such as rapid climate warming, habitat loss, pollution and invasive species. This commonality presents a key question: can the extinction risk of species during past mass extinction events inform our predictions for a modern biodiversity crisis? To investigate if it is possible to establish which species were more likely to go extinct during mass extinctions, we applied a functional trait-based model of extinction risk using a machine learning algorithm to datasets of marine fossils for the end-Permian, end-Triassic and end-Cretaceous mass extinctions. Extinction selectivity was inferred across each individual mass extinction event, before testing whether the selectivity patterns obtained could be used to ‘predict’ the extinction selectivity exhibited during the other mass extinctions. Our analyses show that, despite some similarities in extinction selectivity patterns between ancient crises, the selectivity of mass extinction events is inconsistent, which leads to a poor predictive performance. This lack of predictability is attributed to evolution in marine ecosystems, particularly during the Mesozoic Marine Revolution, associated with shifts in community structure alongside coincident Earth system changes. Our results suggest that past extinctions are unlikely to be informative for predicting extinction risk during a projected mass extinction.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | mass extinction, machine learning, end-Permian, fossil, end-Triassic, end-Cretaceous |
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) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 26 Apr 2023 11:15 |
Last Modified: | 26 Apr 2023 11:15 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | The Royal Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1098/rsos.221507 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:198583 |