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Published on: January 6, 2023
Preservation of species abundance in marine death assemblages
1Department of Geophysical Sciences, University of Chicago, 5734 South Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 USA. skidwell@midway.uchicago.edu
Abstract:
Fossil assemblages of skeletal material are thought to differ from their source live communities, particularly in relative abundance of species, owing to potential bias from postmortem transport and time-averaging of multiple generations. However, statistical meta-analysis of 85 marine molluscan data sets indicates that, although sensitive to sieve mesh-size and environment, time-averaged death assemblages retain a strong signal of species' original rank orders. Naturally accumulated death assemblages thus provide a reliable means of acquiring the abundance data that are key to a new generation of paleobiologic and macroecologic questions and to extending ecological time-series via sedimentary cores.
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