Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T22:44:38.545Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Continental-scale biogeographic variation: provinces versus gradients in the Upper Ordovician of Laurentia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2016

Chelsea E. Jenkins  and
Steven M. Holland
Chelsea E. Jenkins
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-2501, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected]
Steven M. Holland
Affiliation:
Department of Geology, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-2501, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although provinces are widely used to delimit large-scale variations in biotic composition, it is unknown to what extent such variations simply reflect large-scale gradients, much as has been shown at smaller scales for communities. We examine here whether four previously described Middle and Late Ordovician provinces on Laurentia are best described as distinct provinces or as biotic gradients through a combination of the Paleobiology Database and new field data. Both data sets indicate considerable overlap in faunal composition, with spatial patterns in Jaccard similarity, quantified Jaccard similarity, and nonmetric multidimensional scaling ordination structure that correspond to variations in substrate type, specifically from carbonate-dominated strata in western Laurentia to mixed carbonate–siliciclastic strata in the midcontinent to siliciclastic-dominated rocks in easternmost Laurentia. Because sampling was limited to shallow-subtidal settings, this gradient cannot be attributed to variations in water depth. Likewise, geographic distance accounts for only a quarter of the variation in faunal composition. This cross-continent faunal gradient increases in strength into the early Late Ordovician, and appears to represent increased siliciclastic influx into eastern Laurentia during the Taconic orogeny. These results raise the question of whether biogeographic provinces may be in general better interpreted and analyzed as biotic gradients rather than as discrete entities.

Type
Articles
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 42 , Issue 3 , August 2016 , pp. 410 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 The Paleontological Society. All rights reserved 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Literature Cited

Adey, W. H., and Steneck, R. S.. 2001. Thermogeography over time creates biogeographic regions: a temperature/space/time-integrated model and an abundance-weighted test for benthic marine algae. Journal of Phycology 37:677–698.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anstey, R. L. 1986. Bryozoan provinces and patterns of generic evolution and extinction in the Late Ordovician of North America. Lethaia 19:33–51.Google Scholar
Ashton, W. D. 1972. Logit transformation. Macmillan, New York.Google Scholar
Blakey, R. 2013. Colorado Geosystems Plateau. http://cpgeosystems.com/index.html, accessed 11 March 2013.Google Scholar
Bretsky, P. W. 1970. Upper Ordovician ecology of the central Appalachians. Peabody Museum of Natural History, New Haven, Conn.Google Scholar
Carrera, M. G., and Rigby, J. K.. 1999. Biogeography of Ordovician sponges. Journal of Paleontology 73:26–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chao, A., Chazdon, R. L., Colwell, R. K., and Shenn, T.. 2005. A new statistical approach for assessing similarity of species composition with incidence and abundance data. Ecology Letters 8:148–159.Google Scholar
Dalvé, E. 1948. The fossil fauna of the Ordovician in the Cincinnati Region. University Museum, Department of Geology and Geography, University of Cincinnati, Ohio.Google Scholar
Elias, R. J. 1982. Latest Ordovician solitary rugose corals of eastern North America. Bulletins of American Paleontology 81:1–85.Google Scholar
Ettensohn, F. R. 2010. Origin of Late Ordovician (mid-Mohawkian) temperate-water conditions on southeastern Laurentia: glacial or tectonic? In S. C. Finney and W. B. N. Berry, eds. The Ordovician earth system. Geological Society of America Special Paper 466:163–175.Google Scholar
Finnegan, S., Bergmann, K., Eiler, J. M., Jones, D. S., Fike, D. A., Eiseman, I., Hughes, N. C., Tripati, A. K., and Fischer, W. W.. 2011. The magnitude and duration of Late Ordovician–Early Silurian Glaciation. Science 331:903–906.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Geolex, United States Geological Survey. 2012. National Geologic Map Database Geologic Names Lexicon: U.S. Department of the Interior, U.S. Geological Survey, Reston, Va. http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/Geolex/geolex_home.html, accessed 11 March 2013.Google Scholar
Gosz, J.R. 1992. Gradient analysis of ecological change in time and space: implications for forest management. Ecological Applications 2:248–261. doi: 10.2307/1941859.Google Scholar
Holland, S. M. 1997. Using time-environment analysis to recognize faunal events in the Upper Ordovician of the Cincinnati Arch. Pp. 309–334 in Carlton E. Brett, ed. Paleontological event horizons: their stratigraphic, ecological, and evolutionary implications. Columbia University Press, New York.Google Scholar
Holland, S. M. 2010. Additive diversity partitioning in palaeobiology: revisiting Sepkoski’s question. Palaeontology 53:1237–1254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holland, S. M., and Patzkowsky, M. E.. 1996. Sequence stratigraphy and long-term paleoceanographic change in the Middle and Upper Ordovician of the eastern United States. In B. J. Witzke, G. A. Ludvigsen, and J. E. Day, eds. Paleozoic sequence stratigraphy: views from the North American craton. Geological Society of America Special Paper 306:117–130.Google Scholar
Holland, S. M., and Patzkowsky, M. E.. 1997. Distal orogenic effects on peripheral bulge sedimentation: Middle and Upper Ordovician of the Nashville Dome. Journal of Sedimentary Research 67:250–263.Google Scholar
Holland, S. M., and Patzkowsky, M. E.. 2007. Gradient ecology of a biotic invasion: biofacies of the type Cincinnatian Series (Upper Ordovician), Cincinnati, Ohio region, USA. Palaios 22:392–407.Google Scholar
Holland, S. M., and Patzkowsky, M. E.. 2012. Sequence architecture of the Bighorn Dolomite, Wyoming, USA: Transition to the Late Ordovician icehouse. Journal of Sedimentary Research 82:599–615.Google Scholar
Holmden, C., Creaser, R., and Muehlenbachs, K.. 1998. Isotopic evidence for geochemical decoupling between ancient epeiric seas and bordering oceans: implications for secular curves. Geology 26:567–570.Google Scholar
Jaccard, P. 1912. The distribution of the flora in the alpine zone. New Phytologist 11:37–50.Google Scholar
Jin, J., Harper, D. A. T., Rasmussen, J. A., and Sheehan, P. M.. 2012. Late Ordovician massive-bedded Thalassinoides ichnofacies along the paleoequator of Laurentia. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 367–368:73–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kolata, D. R., Huff, W. D., and Bergström, S. M.. 2001. The Ordovician Sebree Trough: an oceanic passage to the Midcontinent United States. Geological Society of America Bulletin 113:1067–1078.Google Scholar
Lande, R. 1996. Statistics and partitioning of species diversity, and similarity among multiple communities. Oikos 76:5–13.Google Scholar
Mohibullah, M., Williams, M., Vandenbroucke, T. R. A., Sabbe, K., and Zalasiewicz, J. A.. 2012. Marine ostracod provinciality in the Late Ordovician of palaeocontinental Laurentia and its environmental and geographical expression. PLoS ONE 7:e41682. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0041682.Google Scholar
Paleobiology Database. 2013. http://paleobiodb.org, accessed 11 March 2013.Google Scholar
Panchuk, K. M., Holmden, C., and Leslie, S. A.. 2006. Local controls on carbon cycling in the Ordovician midcontinent region of North America, with implications for carbon isotope secular curves. Journal of Sedimentary Research 76:200–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patzkowsky, M. E., and Holland, S. M.. 1996. Extinction, invasion, and sequence stratigraphy: patterns of faunal change in the Middle and Upper Ordovician of the eastern United States. In B. J. Witzke, G. A. Ludvigsen, and J. E. Day, eds. Paleozoic sequence stratigraphy: views from the North American craton. Geological Society of America Special Paper 306:131–142.Google Scholar
Patzkowsky, M. E., and Holland, S. M.. 1999. Biofacies replacement in a sequence stratigraphic framework: Middle and Upper Ordovician of the Nashville Dome, Tennessee, USA. Palaios 14:301–323.Google Scholar
Patzkowsky, M. E., and Holland, S. M.. 2012. Stratigraphic paleobiology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.Google Scholar
Pope, M. C., and Read, J. F.. 1997. High-frequency cyclicity of the Lexington Limestone (Middle Ordovician), a cool-water carbonate clastic ramp in an active foreland basin. In N.P. James and J. P. Clarke, eds. Cool water carbonates. Society of Economic Paleontology and Mineralogy Special Publication 56:419–438.Google Scholar
Pope, M. C., and Read, J. F.. 1998. Ordovician metre-scale cycles: implications for climate and eustatic fluctuations in the central Appalachians during a global greenhouse, non-glacial to glacial transition. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 138:27–42.Google Scholar
R Core Team. 2012. R: a language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. http://www.R-project.org.Google Scholar
Railsback, L. B., Ackerly, S. C., Anderson, T. F., and Cisne, J. L.. 1990. Palaeontological and isotope evidence for warm saline deep waters in Ordovician oceans. Nature 343:156–159.Google Scholar
Ross, R. J. Jr., Bergström, S. M., International Union of Geological Sciences, and International Subcommission on Ordovician Stratigraphy. 1982. The Ordovician System in the United States. Correlation chart and explanatory notes. International Union of Geological Sciences Publication 12:1–73.Google Scholar
Sclafani, J. A., and Holland, S. M.. 2013. The species-area relationship in the Late Ordovician: a test using neutral theory. Diversity 5:240–262.Google Scholar
Scotese, C. R., and McKerrow, W. S.. 1991. Ordovician plate tectonic reconstructions. Geological Survey of Canada Paper 90–9:271–282.Google Scholar
Spalding, M. D., Fox, H. E., Allen, G. R., Davidson, N., Ferdaña, Z. A., Finlayson, M., Halpern, B. S., Jorge, M. A., Lombana, A., Lourie, S. A., Martin, K. D., McManus, E., Molnar, J., Recchia, C. A., and Robertson, J.. 2007. Marine ecosystems of the world: a bioregionalization of coastal and shelf areas. BioScience 57:573–583.Google Scholar
Springer, D. A., and Bambach, R. K.. 1985. Gradient versus cluster analysis of fossil assemblages: a comparison from the Ordovician of southwestern Virginia. Lethaia 18:181–198.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sweet, W. C., and Bergström, S. M.. 1984. Conodont provinces and biofacies of the Late Ordovician. Geological Society of America Special Papers 196:69–88.Google Scholar
Valentine, J. W., Foin, T., and Peart, D.. 1978. A provincial model of Phanerozoic marine diversity. Paleobiology 4:55–66.Google Scholar
Whittaker, R. H. 1967. Gradient analysis of vegetation. Biological Reviews 49:207–264.Google Scholar
Whittaker, R. H., and Niering, W. A.. 1965. Vegetation of the Santa Catalina Mountains, Arizona: a gradient analysis of the south slope. Ecology 46:429–452.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zhen, Y. Y., and Percival, I. G.. 2003. Ordovician conodont biogeography—reconsidered. Lethaia 36:357–370.Google Scholar