Twenty-million-year relationship between mammalian diversity and primary productivity.
At global and regional scales, primary productivity strongly correlates with richness patterns of extant animals across space, suggesting that resource availability and climatic conditions drive patterns of diversity. However, the existence and consistency of such diversity-productivity relationships through geological history is unclear. Here we provide a comprehensive quantitative test of the diversity-productivity relationship for terrestrial large mammals through time across broad temporal and spatial scales. We combine >14,000 occurrences for 690 fossil genera through the Neogene (23-1.8 Mya) with regional estimates of primary productivity from fossil plant communities in North America and Europe. We show a significant positive diversity-productivity relationship through the 20-million-year record, providing evidence on unprecedented spatial and temporal scales that this relationship is a general pattern in the ecology and paleo-ecology of our planet. Further, we discover that genus richness today does not match the fossil relationship, suggesting that a combination of human impacts and Pleistocene climate variability has modified the 20-million-year ecological relationship by strongly reducing primary productivity and driving many mammalian species into decline or to extinction.
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, 60325 Frankfurt, Germany; Institute of Ecology, Evolution and Diversity, Goethe University, 60438 Frankfurt, Germany; sfritz@senckenberg.de.
Susanne A
SA
Fritz
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, 60325 Frankfurt, Germany; Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, 00014 Helsinki, Finland;
Jussi T
JT
Eronen
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, 60325 Frankfurt, Germany; Institute of Biology, Leipzig University, 04103 Leipzig, Germany;
Jan
J
Schnitzler
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, 60325 Frankfurt, Germany;
Christian
C
Hof
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912; School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Clifton, Bristol BS8 1RJ, United Kingdom;
Christine M
CM
Janis
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, 60325 Frankfurt, Germany; Institute of Geosciences, Goethe University, 60438 Frankfurt, Germany;
Andreas
A
Mulch
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, 60325 Frankfurt, Germany; Institute of Ecology, Evolution and Diversity, Goethe University, 60438 Frankfurt, Germany;
Katrin
K
Böhning-Gaese
Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (BiK-F), Senckenberg Gesellschaft für Naturforschung, 60325 Frankfurt, Germany; Institute of Ecology, Evolution and Diversity, Goethe University, 60438 Frankfurt, Germany; Department of Ecology and Evolution, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, NY 11794.
Catherine H
CH
Graham
D000818:Animals; D044822:Biodiversity; D001901:Botany; D003198:Computer Simulation; D005060:Europe; D005580:Fossils; D005843:Geography; D008322:Mammals / Q000502:physiology*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009656:North America; D010163:Paleontology; D010944:Plants / Q000378:metabolism*; D013997:Time Factors
macroecology; mammals; net primary production; paleontology