title: Environmental Predictors of Diversity in Recent Planktonic Foraminifera as Recorded in Marine Sediments.
abstract: Global diversity patterns are thought to result from a combination of environmental and historical factors. This study tests the set of ecological and evolutionary hypotheses proposed to explain the global variation in present-day coretop diversity in the macroperforate planktonic foraminifera, a clade with an exceptional fossil record. Within this group, marine surface sediment assemblages are thought to represent an accurate, although centennial to millennial time-averaged, representation of recent diversity patterns. Environmental variables chosen to capture ocean temperature, structure, productivity and seasonality were used to model a range of diversity measures across the world's oceans. Spatial autoregressive models showed that the same broad suite of environmental variables were important in shaping each of the four largely independent diversity measures (rarefied species richness, Simpson's evenness, functional richness and mean evolutionary age). Sea-surface temperature explains the largest portion of diversity in all four diversity measures, but not in the way predicted by the metabolic theory of ecology. Vertical structure could be linked to increased diversity through the strength of stratification, but not through the depth of the mixed layer. There is limited evidence that seasonal turnover explains diversity patterns. There is evidence for functional redundancy in the low-latitude sites. The evolutionary mechanism of deep-time stability finds mixed support whilst there is relatively little evidence for an out-of-the-tropics model. These results suggest the diversity patterns of planktonic foraminifera cannot be explained by any one environmental variable or proposed mechanism, but instead reflect multiple processes acting in concert.
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, United Kingdom.|Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Ascot SL5 7PY, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Isabel S
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7174-0725
authors.initials: IS
authors.lastname: Fenton
authors.affiliation: School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3AT, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Paul N
authors.initials: PN
authors.lastname: Pearson
authors.affiliation: School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Tom
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Dunkley Jones
authors.affiliation: Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, United Kingdom.|Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Ascot SL5 7PY, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Andy
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Purvis
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D056908:Foraminifera / Q000502:physiology*; D019015:Geologic Sediments / Q000382:microbiology*; D038622:Internationality; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D009792:Oceans and Seas; D010802:Phylogeny; D010933:Plankton / Q000502:physiology*; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable; D013045:Species Specificity; D013696:Temperature