Impact of global climate cooling on Ordovician marine biodiversity

Daniel Eliahou Ontiveros (), Gregory Beaugrand, Bertrand Lefebvre, Chloe Markussen Marcilly, Thomas Servais and Alexandre Pohl ()
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Daniel Eliahou Ontiveros: Univ. Littoral Côte d’Opale, CNRS, Univ. Lille, UMR 8187 LOG
Gregory Beaugrand: Univ. Littoral Côte d’Opale, CNRS, Univ. Lille, UMR 8187 LOG
Bertrand Lefebvre: Univ Lyon, Univ Lyon 1, ENSL, CNRS, LGL-TPE
Chloe Markussen Marcilly: University of Oslo
Thomas Servais: Univ. Lille, CNRS, UMR 8198-Evo-Eco-Paleo
Alexandre Pohl: UMR 6282 CNRS, Université de Bourgogne

Nature Communications, 2023, vol. 14, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Global cooling has been proposed as a driver of the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event, the largest radiation of Phanerozoic marine animal Life. Yet, mechanistic understanding of the underlying pathways is lacking and other possible causes are debated. Here we couple a global climate model with a macroecological model to reconstruct global biodiversity patterns during the Ordovician. In our simulations, an inverted latitudinal biodiversity gradient characterizes the late Cambrian and Early Ordovician when climate was much warmer than today. During the Mid-Late Ordovician, climate cooling simultaneously permits the development of a modern latitudinal biodiversity gradient and an increase in global biodiversity. This increase is a consequence of the ecophysiological limitations to marine Life and is robust to uncertainties in both proxy-derived temperature reconstructions and organism physiology. First-order model-data agreement suggests that the most conspicuous rise in biodiversity over Earth’s history – the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event – was primarily driven by global cooling.

Date: 2023
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-41685-w

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