EGU2020-10213
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-10213
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Primary productivity, deoxygenation, and the Gulliver-absence effect determine bivalve body size following the end-Permian mass extinction

Melanie Tietje1,2, William J. Foster1,3,4, Jana Gliwa1, Clara Lembke1, Autumn Pugh5, Richard Hofmann1, Sara Varela1, Louise C. Foster4, Dieter Korn1, and Martin Aberhan1
Melanie Tietje et al.
  • 1Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung, Berlin, Germany
  • 2Ecoinformatics and Biodiversity, Department of Biology, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
  • 3Universität Potsdam, Institut für Erd- und Umweltwissenschaften, Potsdam, Germany
  • 4University College Dublin, School of Earth Sciences, Dublin, Ireland
  • 5University of Leeds, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Leeds, UK

The impact of mass extinctions on the body sizes of animals has received considerable attention and debate, as to whether the reduced size of post-extinction organisms is due to the selective extinction of large species, absence of large species as a stochastic effect of low-diversity faunas, or a size decrease within surviving genera and species. Here, we investigated the body sizes of bivalves following the end-Permian mass extinction event and show that the shell size increase of bivalve genera was driven by both evolutionary and ecophenotypic responses. First, some genera show significant increases in body size with the evolution of new species. Further, the same genera record significant within-species increases in average and maximum body size into the late Induan, indicating that ecophenotypic changes were also involved on long-term body size trends. These increases are associated with invigorated ocean circulation, improved oxygenation of the seafloor, and probably increased food supply.

How to cite: Tietje, M., Foster, W. J., Gliwa, J., Lembke, C., Pugh, A., Hofmann, R., Varela, S., Foster, L. C., Korn, D., and Aberhan, M.: Primary productivity, deoxygenation, and the Gulliver-absence effect determine bivalve body size following the end-Permian mass extinction, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-10213, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-10213, 2020

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