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      Machine learning identifies ecological selectivity patterns across the end-Permian mass extinction

      Foster, William J.; Ayzel, Georgy; Münchmeyer, Jannes; Rettelbach, Tabea; Kitzmann, Niklas H.; Isson, Terry T.; Mutti, Maria; Aberhan, Martin
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      Foster 2022.pdf
      Accepted version, 1.591Mb
      DOI
       10.1017/pab.2022.1
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      Permanent link to Research Commons version
      https://hdl.handle.net/10289/14777
      Abstract
      The end-Permian mass extinction occurred alongside a large swath of environmental changes that are often invoked as extinction mechanisms, even when a direct link is lacking. One way to elucidate the cause(s) of a mass extinction is to investigate extinction selectivity, as it can reveal critical information on organismic traits as key determinants of extinction and survival. Here we show that machine learning algorithms, specifically gradient boosted decision trees, can be used to identify determinants of extinction as well as to predict extinction risk. To understand which factors led to the end-Permian mass extinction during an extreme global warming event, we quantified the ecological selectivity of marine extinctions in the well-studied South China region. We find that extinction selectivity varies between different groups of organisms and that a synergy of multiple environmental stressors best explains the overall end-Permian extinction selectivity pattern. Extinction risk was greater for genera that had a low species richness, narrow bathymetric ranges limited to deep-water habitats, a stationary mode of life, a siliceous skeleton, or, less critically, calcitic skeletons. These selective losses directly link the extinctions to the environmental effects of rapid injections of carbon dioxide into the ocean-atmosphere system, specifically the combined effects of expanded oxygen minimum zones, rapid warming, and potentially ocean acidification.
      Date
      2022
      Type
      Journal Article
      Publisher
      Cambridge University Press
      Rights
      © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Paleontological Society. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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      • Science and Engineering Papers [3124]
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