Prediction and Identification of Mass Extinctions
Extinctions are a fundamental part of evolution…we are at the beginning of a contemporary mass extinction event.
Project leaders are
(University of Leeds, UK)
(University of Warsaw)
Extinctions are a fundamental part of evolution, but high numbers of extinctions in a relatively short period of time can result in extinction cascades, with unprecedented changes in ecosystem structure, causing ecosystem collapse and low levels of diversity that persist for millions of years. Life on Earth has experienced several major biodiversity crises in the past, known as mass extinction events. However, there is still no consensus on what qualifies a biodiversity fluctuation as a mass extinction event.
This workshop will focus on
- What is a mass extinction?
- Are mass extinctions temporally scale-independent?
- How can the fossil record of extinct communities be used to inform biodiversity dynamics of extant communities?
- Is it possible to predict mass extinctions?
Group members
Vivi Vajda (Swedish Museum of Natural History, Sweden), Daniele Silvestro (University of Fribourg, Switzerland), Zhen Xu (University of Leeds, UK), Andrej Spiridonov (Vilnius University, Lithuania), Eileen Straube (University of Bayreuth, Germany), William Foster (University of Hamburg, Germany), Roger A. Close (University of Oxford, UK), Junxuan Fan (Nanjing University, China), Sara Varela González (University of Vigo, Spain), Jenny L. McGuire (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA), Matthew Clapham (UC Santa Cruz, USA), Ádám Kocsis (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany), Steve C. Wang (Swarthmore College, USA)