Direct and indirect effects of biological factors on extinction risk in fossil bivalves.

ABSTRACT: Biological factors, such as abundance and body size, may contribute directly to extinction risk and indirectly through their influence on other biological characteristics, such as geographic range size. Paleontological data can be used to explicitly test many of these hypothesized relationships, and general patterns revealed through analysis of the fossil record can help refine predictive models of extinction risk developed for extant species. Here, I use structural equation modeling to tease apart the contributions of three canonical predictors of extinction--abundance, body size, and geographic range size--to the duration of bivalve species in the early Cenozoic marine fossil record of the eastern United States. I find that geographic range size has a strong direct effect on extinction r

SUBMITTER: Harnik PG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3158225 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature