10.5061/DRYAD.R4XGXD29V
Schneebeli, Elke
0000-0002-1552-4785
University of Zurich
Data from: Regime shifts in an Early Triassic subtropical ecosystem
Dryad
dataset
2020
Swiss National Science Foundation
https://ror.org/00yjd3n13
PBZHP2-135955
2020-12-01T00:00:00Z
2020-12-01T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2020.588696
98522 bytes
6
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
The Early Triassic was one of the most remarkable time intervals in Earth
History. To begin with, life on Earth had to face one of the largest
subaerial volcanic degassing, the Siberian Traps, followed by a plethora
of accompanying environmental hazards with pronounced and repeated
climatic changes. These changes not only led to repeated and, for several
marine nektonic clades, intense extinction events but also to significant
changes in terrestrial ecosystems. The Early Triassic terrestrial
ecosystems of the southern subtropical region (Pakistan) are not
necessarily marked by abrupt extinction events but by extreme shifts in
composition. Modern ecological theories describe such shifts as
catastrophic regime shifts. Here, the applicability of modern ecological
theories to these past events is tested. Abrupt shifts in ecosystems can
occur when protracted changing abiotic drivers (e.g. climate) reach
critical points (thresholds or tipping points) sometimes accentuated by
stochastic events. Early Triassic terrestrial plant ecosystem changes
stand out from the longer term paleobotanical records because changes of
similar magnitude have not been observed for many millions of years before
and after the Early Triassic. To date, these changes have been attributed
to repeated severe environmental perturbations, but here an alternative
explanation is tested: the initial environmental perturbations around the
Permian–Triassic boundary interval are regarded here as a main cause for a
massive loss in terrestrial ecosystem resilience with the effect that
comparatively small-scale perturbations in the following ~5 Ma lead to
abrupt regime shifts in terrestrial ecosystems.