The effect of geographic range on extinction risk during background and mass extinction.

ABSTRACT: Wide geographic range is generally thought to buffer taxa against extinction, but the strength of this effect has not been investigated for the great majority of the fossil record. Although the majority of genus extinctions have occurred between major mass extinctions, little is known about extinction selectivity regimes during these "background" intervals. Consequently, the question of whether selectivity regimes differ between background and mass extinctions is largely unresolved. Using logistic regression, we evaluated the selectivity of genus survivorship with respect to geographic range by using a global database of fossil benthic marine invertebrates spanning the Cambrian through the Neogene periods, an interval of approximately 500 My. Our results show that wide geographic range has

SUBMITTER: Payne JL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1890565 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature