Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35892219›Full record

ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2022

Does functional redundancy determine the ecological severity of a mass extinction event?

Daniel G Dick, Simon Darroch, Philip Novack-Gottshall, Marc Laflamme

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
2citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

2 citing papers in PubMed.

  1. Article
  2. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Daniel G DickDepartment of Chemical and Physical Sciences, University of Toronto Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Road, Mississauga, ON, Canada L5 L 1C6.ORCID 0000-0002-5558-490X
Simon DarrochDepartment of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Vanderbilt University, 5726 Stevenson Center, Nashville, TN 37240, USA.
Philip Novack-GottshallDepartment of Biological Sciences, Benedictine University, 5700 College Road, Lisle, IL 60532, USA.
Marc LaflammeDepartment of Chemical and Physical Sciences, University of Toronto Mississauga, 3359 Mississauga Road, Mississauga, ON, Canada L5 L 1C6.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Many authors have noted the apparent 'decoupling' of the taxonomic and ecological severity of mass extinction events, with no widely accepted mechanistic explanation for this pattern having been offered. Here, we test between two key factors that potentially influence ecological severity: biosphere entropy (a measure of functional redundancy), and the degree of functional selectivity (in terms of deviation from a pattern of random extinction with respect to functional entities). While theoretical simulations suggest that the Shannon entropy of a given community prior to an extinction event determines the expected outcome following a perturbation of a given magnitude, actual variation in Shannon entropy between major extinction intervals is insufficient to explain the observed variation in ecological severity. Within this information-theoretic framework, we show that it is the degree of functional selectivity that is expected to primarily determine the ecological impact of a given perturbation when levels of functional redundancy are not substantially different.

Indexed as

Extinction, BiologicalFossilsBiodiversityBiological Evolutionecological severityextinction severityfunctional redundancymass extinctionsOrdovicianPermian

Identifiers

PMID35892219
PMCPMC9326297

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.