Relative Biodiversity Trends of the Cenozoic Caribbean Region
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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 12-2003 Relative biodiversity trends of the Cenozoic Caribbean Region : investigations of possible causes and issues of scale using a biostratigraphic database of corals, echinoids, bivalves, and gastropods William Gray Dean Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Dean, William Gray, "Relative biodiversity trends of the Cenozoic Caribbean Region : investigations of possible causes and issues of scale using a biostratigraphic database of corals, echinoids, bivalves, and gastropods. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2003. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/5124 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by William Gray Dean entitled "Relative biodiversity trends of the Cenozoic Caribbean Region : investigations of possible causes and issues of scale using a biostratigraphic database of corals, echinoids, bivalves, and gastropods." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Geology. Michael L. McKinney, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by William Gray Dean entitled "Relative Biodiversity Trends of the Cenozoic Caribbean Region: Investigations of Possible Causes and Issues of Scale using a Biostratigraphic Database of Corals, Echinoids, Bivalves, and Gastropods." I have examined the final paper copy of this dissertation forform and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillmentof the requirements forthe degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Geology. Michael L. McKinney, Major Professor We have read this dissertation �'pAA4 Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies RELATIVE BIODIVERSITY TRENDS OF THE CENOZOIC CARIBBEAN REGION: Investigations of Possible Causes and Issues of Scale using a Biostratigraphic Database of Corals, Echinoids, Bivalves and Gastropods A Dissertation Presented for the Doctoral of Philosophy Degree University of Tennessee, Knoxville William Gray Dean December 2003 ACKNOWLEGMENTS I would like to thank my committee members for allowing me the freedom and latitude to pursue my assessment of paleobiodiversity through the use of relative metrics I designed. Further, I would like to extend gratitude to those who have made biostratigraphic data available for studies such as this one. Special thanks are extended to on-line resources such as the Neogene Marine Biota of tropical America (NMIT A), the Panamanian Paleontological Project (PPP), the Florida Museum of Natural History, as well as numerous published sources. I am also grateful to those individuals who have directly shared pertinent data with me, including Steven Donovan and Roger Portell. And lastly, I thank the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of Tennessee for their continued support of my endeavors over the past fewyears. 11 ABSTRACT The fossil record remains the primary tool to understand macro-evolutionary processes over time. Unfortunately, much debate has centered upon sampling biases that pervade the rock and fossil record. A relative metric is presented that reduces the effectof uneven distribution of fossils across time and space. The Diversity Index of Growth (DIG) metric measures relative change of biodiversity because it examines the fourkey parameters of biodiversity: New, Extinct, Stable and Total, as obtained from biostratigraphic data. In this study, DIG was utilized to examine biodiversity trends of a Cenozoic Caribbean database consisting of genus-level biostratigraphic occurrences of corals, echinoids, bivalves and gastropods. The results of this study indicate that the individual class-level trends observed from the database are consistent with previously interpreted trends of the fourclades. Key featuresof the observed biodiversity trends of the Caribbean include three peaks of diversification, including increased biodiversity near the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Marine invertebrate biodiversity appears to be linked to a variety of environmental processes, including volcanism and climate change. The timing of biodiversity increases corresponds to increases in sea-level and three major volcanic episodesin the Caribbean. The trends of the total biodiversity followsea-level change, especially when sea-level data are reduced to relative change and compiled into time increments equal to the fossil data. The positive relationship between sea-level increases and biodiversificationis observed at several spatial-temporal scales, and indicates that relative biotic diversity iii change may be useful for followinghighstand facies or for sequence stratigraphy applications. Climate effects, as interpreted fromisotopic data and terrestrial data, also suggest a potential agreement between climate, sea-level and biodiversity. Also investigated in this study are the effects of scale and hierarchy from temporal, spatial and taxonomic perspectives. Longer time intervals result in vastly differentbiodiversity trends than shorter time intervals over the same data set. Taxonomic hierarchy was investigated by comparing trends of species-level and genus-level biodiversity, and it was observed that similar biodiversity trends did not consistently cascade across taxonomic hierarchies. Also demonstrated in this study is the problem of comparing data of differinglevels of spatial-temporal resolution. Not only do such comparisons stymie statistical correlations, but they can also yield conflictinginterpretations of the causes of biodiversity. A new metric is introduced to understand and quantify the relative degree of resolution achievable by a database. Sensitivity of Data (SOD) gives a measurement of the spatial, temporal, and observational extent over which the interpretations gleaned froma database are valid. In many instances, the potentiallydiffering interpretations made fromthe same or similar data may be attributed to variation in the spatio-temporal sensitivity of the data, or the environmental processes to which they are compared. Thus SOD allows an evaluation of the temporal, spatial and therefore,hierarchical issues that affect interpretations of geologic data. Higher SOD values indicate finer-resolution data while lower SOD values indicate lower-resolution data. High SOD values are shown here in close agreement to isotopic or sea-level data that are sub-regional to basinal in scale. The iv Caribbean database used here has a low SOD value and conforms better to regional to global scale data. I hypothesize that the sensitivity of the data contributes to the assignment of various environmental processes as higher or lower hierarchies that impart differential control to the biosphere. These higher- and lower-orders of processes likely may originate only because of variation in the quality and quantity of observations used to interpret past events. Thus, the relativity of time, data, and trends of the incomplete rock record suggest the need to investigate applications of relative metrics to not just the biostratigraphic data but to geologic data, as a whole. V TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: PROLOGUE ............................................................................................................................... 1 IN1'RODUCTION................................................................................. .................................................................. 1 OVERVIEW .......................................................................................................................................................... 2 SUMMARY ......................................................................................................................................................... 10 CHAPTER 2: RELATIVE METRICS FOR ABSOLUTE PROBLEMS .................................................. 12 ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................................ 12 INTRODUCTION..................................................................................... ............................................................ 13 BACKGROUND .................................................................................................................................................. 16 OBJECTIVES ...................................................................................................................................................... 24 MATERIALS.................................................. ..................................................................................................... 25 METHODS ........................................................................................................................................................