Abstract
Recent analyses have suggested that extinction and origination rates exhibit long-range correlations, implying that the fossil record may be controlled by self-organized criticality or other scale-free internal dynamics of the biosphere. Here we directly test for correlations in the fossil record by calculating the autocorrelation of extinction [corrected] and origination rates through time. Our results show that extinction rates are uncorrelated beyond the average duration of a stratigraphic interval. Thus, they lack the long-range correlations predicted by the self-organized criticality hypothesis. In contrast, origination rates show strong autocorrelations due to long-term trends. After detrending, origination rates generally show weak positive correlations at lags of 5-10 million years (Myr) and weak negative correlations at lags of 10-30 Myr, consistent with aperiodic oscillations around their long-term trends. We hypothesize that origination rates are more correlated than extinction rates because originations of new taxa create new ecological niches and new evolutionary pathways for reaching them, thus creating conditions that favour further diversification.
Full Text
The Full Text of this article is available as a PDF (458.1 KB).
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Bak P, Sneppen K. Punctuated equilibrium and criticality in a simple model of evolution. Phys Rev Lett. 1993 Dec 13;71(24):4083–4086. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.71.4083. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Bak P, Tang C, Wiesenfeld K. Self-organized criticality: An explanation of the 1/f noise. Phys Rev Lett. 1987 Jul 27;59(4):381–384. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.59.381. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Hewzulla D., Boulter M. C., Benton M. J., Halley J. M. Evolutionary patterns from mass originations and mass extinctions. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1999 Feb 28;354(1382):463–469. doi: 10.1098/rstb.1999.0397. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Kirchner J. W., Weil A. Delayed biological recovery from extinctions throughout the fossil record. Nature. 2000 Mar 9;404(6774):177–180. doi: 10.1038/35004564. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- doi: 10.1098/rspb.1999.0773. [DOI] [PMC free article] [Google Scholar]
- Sepkoski J. J., Jr Rates of speciation in the fossil record. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1998 Feb 28;353(1366):315–326. doi: 10.1098/rstb.1998.0212. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Sepkoski J. J., Jr Ten years in the library: new data confirm paleontological patterns. Paleobiology. 1993 Winter;19(1):43–51. doi: 10.1017/s0094837300012306. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Sneppen K., Bak P., Flyvbjerg H., Jensen M. H. Evolution as a self-organized critical phenomenon. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1995 May 23;92(11):5209–5213. doi: 10.1073/pnas.92.11.5209. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Solé RV, Manrubia SC, Benton M, Kauffman S, Bak P. Criticality and scaling in evolutionary ecology. Trends Ecol Evol. 1999 Apr;14(4):156–160. doi: 10.1016/s0169-5347(98)01518-3. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Solé RV, Manrubia SC. Extinction and self-organized criticality in a model of large-scale evolution. Phys Rev E Stat Phys Plasmas Fluids Relat Interdiscip Topics. 1996 Jul;54(1):R42–R45. doi: 10.1103/physreve.54.r42. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]