Abstract
AbstractThe Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE) refers to one of the greatest increases in biodiversity during the Phanerozoic. Recent studies have shown that this taxonomic increase can be attributed to elevated origination rates around the Dapingian–Darriwilian boundary in the Middle Ordovician, while extinction rates stayed relatively constant throughout the Ordovician. Even though this global pattern of origination and extinction appears similar across diverse groups and geographical areas, earlier studies suggested that hard substrate taxa may have diversified prior to the GOBE, during the Early Ordovician. Here, we quantify Ordovician diversification dynamics of hard substrate taxa while simultaneously accounting for temporally varying sampling probabilities. Diversification rates of hard substrate taxa, both as a whole and when analysed as separate groups, appear to be very similar to those of free‐living benthic taxa. The observation that the diversification dynamics of many different taxonomic and ecological groups show the same temporal pattern, suggests a common cause of Ordovician diversification dynamics.
Highlights
THE Great Ordovician Biodiversification (GOBE) was one of the greatest increases in biodiversity though the Earth’s history (Sepkoski et al 1981; Webby et al 2004; Harper 2006; Servais & Harper 2018)
Such increases can happen through either low extinction rates or high origination rates, since taxonomic richness is the result of the balance between extinctions and originations
Origination rates of free-living benthic taxa are elevated at the Cambrian–Ordovician boundary, drop thereafter until the Floian–Dapingian boundary, and show a peak at the Dapingian–Darriwilian boundary
Summary
THE Great Ordovician Biodiversification (GOBE) was one of the greatest increases in biodiversity though the Earth’s history (Sepkoski et al 1981; Webby et al 2004; Harper 2006; Servais & Harper 2018). Many previous studies have shown an increase in family, genus and species richness for many different taxonomic groups or regions during the Darriwilian (for an overview see Stigall et al 2019) Such increases can happen through either low extinction rates or high origination rates, since taxonomic richness is the result of the balance between extinctions and originations. While Taylor & Wilson (2003) called the Ordovician the ‘golden age for epizoans on hard substrates’, it is currently unclear when such epizoans diversified and if the abundance of hard substrates may have influenced their diversification
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