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Multiple paleoecological controls on the composition of marine fossil assemblages from the Frasnian (Late Devonian) of Virginia, with a comparison of ordination methods

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2016

Andrew M. Bush  and
Roderic I. Brame
Andrew M. Bush
Affiliation:
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Center for Integrative Geosciences, University of Connecticut, 75 North Eagleville Road, Unit 3043, Storrs, Connecticut 06269. E-mail: [email protected]
Roderic I. Brame
Affiliation:
Division of Education, University of South Florida Polytechnic, 3433 Winter Lake Road, Lakeland, Florida 33803. E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Ecological ordination can reveal gradients in the species composition of fossil assemblages that can be correlated with paleoenvironmental gradients. Ordinations of simulated data sets suggest that nonmetric multidimensional scaling (NMDS) generally produces less distorted results than detrended correspondence analysis (DCA). We ordinated 113 brachiopod-dominated samples from the Frasnian (Late Devonian) Brallier, Scherr, and lower Foreknobs Formations of southwest Virginia, which represent a range of siliciclastic marine paleoenvironments. A clear environmental signal in the ordination results was obscured by (apparently) opportunistic species that occurred at high abundance in multiple environments; samples dominated by these species aggregated in ordination space regardless of paleoenvironmental provenance. After the opportunist-dominated samples were removed, NMDS revealed a gradient in species composition that was highly correlated with substrate (grain size); a second, orthogonal gradient likely reflects variation in disturbance intensity or frequency within grain-size regimes. Additional environmental or ecological factors, such as oxygenation, may also be related to the gradients. These two gradients, plus the environmental factors that controlled the occurrence of opportunistic species, explain much of the variation in assemblage composition in the fauna. In general, the composition of fossil assemblages is probably influenced by multiple paleoecological and paleoenvironmental factors, but many of these can be decomposed and analyzed.

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Paleobiology , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , Fall 2010 , pp. 573 - 591
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Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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References

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