HR: 17:15h
AN: OS14A-06 INVITED    [Abstracts]
TI: Deep Sea Benthic Foraminifera: Love Cold, Fear Warm
AU: * Thomas, E
EM: ellen.thomas@yale.edu
AF: Yale University, Geology & Geophysics, P.O. Box 208109, New Haven, CT 06520-8109, United States
AB: The fossil record provides understanding of possible linkages between long-term environmental changes and evolution of assemblages and morphological species of deep-sea benthic foraminifera, of which the phylogeny is still little known. Deep-sea benthic foraminifera have long morphological species lives and do not commonly suffer massive extinctions: they live in the largest habitat on earth, species have large geographic ranges or are cosmopolitan, and they use motile propagules to rapidly re-populate regions where populations have been destroyed. Extinction occurs only when rapid and severe environmental change affects such a large part of the deep ocean that no refugia exist, even for common species. Deep-sea benthic foraminifera reacted to global cooling (in the earliest Oligocene, middle Miocene and middle Pleistocene) not by extinction, but by a gradual turnover of species. The most extensive turnover occurred in the late Eocene through earliest Oligocene, when some presently important ecological niches were first filled. In contrast, deep-sea benthic foraminifera suffered severe extinction (30-50% of species, including common, cosmopolitan, long-lived species) during the rapid global warming of the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a time of high CO₂ levels and potential ocean acidification. The extinction was followed by slow recovery of faunas, but diversity never returned to pre-extinction levels. The PETM and later, less severe short-term periods of global warming (hyperthermals ETM1 and ETM2) were characterized by low diversity faunas dominated by small, thin-walled individuals. No significant net extinction occurred during the later hyperthermals. Such faunas might reflect dissolution, low oxygen conditions, or blooming of opportunistic species after environmental disturbance. Most commonly cited causes of the PETM extinction are: 1. low oxygen concentrations, 2. acidification of the oceans, 3. increase or decrease in oceanic productivity and/or transfer of food to the sea floor, and 4. increasing temperatures. All 4 factors may have contributed to the extinction, but the first three factors varied regionally and by depth, whereas only the temperature increase affected the deep-sea environment globally. High temperatures not only increase overall metabolic rates, but also affect which species of prokaryotes are most active and which labile compounds they generate, thus the compounds and the amount of labile organic matter available for foraminiferal feeding. At sites along a depth transect at Walvis Ridge (SE Atlantic) species that earlier had been abundant in neritic waters ( Tappanina selmensis) increased strongly in abundance. Some surviving deep-sea species underwent diversification and morphological evolution; during and just after the PETM and two other hyperthermal events the deep-sea genus Abyssamina became more abundant (most pronounced at the deeper sites), while evolving into several morphological species. During the warmer intervals its aperture became more irregular in shape, with an extremely asymmetrical shape at the deepest site during ETM1. The aperture in benthic foraminifera directs the streaming of pseudopods, thus the way of food intake, suggesting that the nature of benthic feeding changed during the warm periods. During the early Eocene (a period characterized by hyperthermals), faunas maintained larger differences in assemblage composition between ocean basins than before the extinction. It remains a question whether this faunal heterogeneity reflects the mode of deep-ocean circulation/ventilation during the warmest period of the Cenozoic.
DE: 1615 Biogeochemical cycles, processes, and modeling (0412, 0414, 0793, 4805, 4912)
DE: 4901 Abrupt/rapid climate change (1605)
DE: 4944 Micropaleontology (0459, 3030)
DE: 4948 Paleocene/Eocene thermal maximum
SC: Ocean Sciences [OS]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting