This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
The goal of this project is to assess the long-term impacts of invasive species on speciation, extinction, and community reorganization by analyzing a particularly well characterized interval of intense invasive activity preserved in the Late Ordovician strata of the Cincinnati Arch. This project will employ ecological niche modeling (ENM) techniques to reconstruct the geographic ranges of individual species of brachiopods at multiple time slices before, during, and after the invasion interval. ENM methods utilize sedimentary parameters determined from the rock record as environmental proxies to estimate the set of environmental condition, or niche, inhabited by individual species. The species geographic range is then predicted to extend to where the set of environmental conditions exists within the study area. The abundant fossils within a well-developed stratigraphic framework in Late Ordovician strata of the Cincinnati Arch will provide an excellent geologic setting to implement and refine ENM methods for modeling the geographic range of fossil species. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the reconstructed geographic ranges of individual species will be analyzed spatially and temporally to examine biogeographic patterns through the invasion interval. Specifically, this project will analyze the biogeographic differences between species native to the Cincinnati region that become extinct versus persist through the invasion interval. For native taxa that survive the invasion interval, whether they respond to the altered environment by (a) shifting their biogeographic ranges to follow a preferred set of abiotic environmental conditions without exhibiting evolutionary change (=habitat tracking or niche conservatism), (b) adaptive change to shifting environmental parameters (=niche evolution), or (c) some combination of these options will be assessed. Phylogenetic revisions of the four brachiopod genera will be conducted to provide an evolutionary framework to assess speciation events during the Richmondian Invasion and further characterize the role of invasive species on speciation. This project will also assess whether native and immigrant species respond differently to environmental change and what features (morphological, phylogenetic, environmental preferences, etc.) characterize the native species that do survive the invasion regime. By elucidating the relative extent that habitat tracking, adaptive change, and biotic vs. abiotic factors have on faunal dynamics during the course of a Paleozoic invasion event, better constraints can be developed to determine the expected long-term (thousands of years) outcome of species invasions within the modern ecosystem. At least three graduate and up to four undergraduate students will be trained in systematic paleontology, stratigraphic field work, and GIS and ENM techniques and will gain experience participating in professional meetings. Collaboration with the Cincinnati Museum Center will result in enriching their collections through donating newly collected material and creation of a permanent exhibit on the relationship between species range and environments and the impact of species invasions in the fossil record. Data collected will also be published in peer-reviewed journals and will target both paleontological/geological and biological audiences in order to best disseminate data on the long term impacts of invasive species to audiences interested in Earth history as well as the potential effects of invaders in the modern biodiversity crisis.
