Evolution of Silica Biomineralizing Plankton

• Main Author: Kotrc, Benjamin
• Other Authors: Knoll, Andrew Herbert
• Language: en_US
• Published: Harvard University 2013
• Subjects: Paleontology; Geobiology; cenozoic; diatoms; morphospace; radiolarians; silica; subsampling
• Online Access: http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:10969; http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:11051218

The post-Paleozoic history of the silica cycle involves just two groups of marine plankton, radiolarians and diatoms. I apply paleobiological methods to better understand the Cenozoic evolution of both groups. The Cenozoic rise in diatom diversity has long been related to a concurrent decline in radiolarian test silicification. I address evolutionary questions on both sides of this coevolutionary coin: Was the taxonomic diversification of diatoms accompanied by morphological diversification? Is our view of morphological diatom diversification affected by sampling biases? What evolutionary mechanisms underlie the macroevolutionary decline in radiolarian silicification? Conventionally, diatom diversification describes a steep, monotonic rise, a view recently questioned due to sampling bias. For a different perspective, I constructed a diatom morphospace based on discrete characters, populated through time using an occurrence-level database. Distances between taxa in morphospace and on a molecular phylogeny are not strongly correlated, suggesting that morphospace was explored early in their evolutionary history, followed by relative stasis. I quantified morphospace occupancy through time using several disparity metrics. Metrics describing average separation of taxa show stasis, while metrics describing occupied volume show an increase with time. Disparity metrics are also subject to sampling biases. Under subsampling, I find that disparity metrics show varied responses: metrics describing separation of taxa into morphospace are unaffected, while those describing occupied volume lose their clear increases. Disparity can have geographic components, analogous to \(\alpha\) and \(\beta\) taxonomic diversity; I find more evidence of stasis in an analysis of \(\bar{\alpha}\) disparity. Overall, these results suggest stasis in Cenozoic diatom disparity. The radiolarian decline in silicification could result from either macroevolutionary processes operating above the species level (punctuated queilibria) or anagenetic changes within lineages. I measured silicification in three phyletic lineages, Stichocorys, Didymocyrtis, and Centrobotrys, from four tropical Pacific DSDP sites. Likelihood-based model fitting finds no strong support for directional evolution, pointing toward selection among species, rather than within species. Each lineage shows a different trajectory, perhaps due to differences in the ecological role played by the test. Because Stichocorys shows close correspondence to the assemblage-level trend, abundance may be an important factor through which within-lineage changes can influence the macroevolutionary pattern. === Earth and Planetary Sciences