I continue to be interested in the relationship between local ecological processes and global and long-term macroevolutionary patterns, especially during the Ordovician Radiation. This relationship has been an area of much interest in recent years as ecologists and paleobiologists begin dissecting global patterns.
During my master's with Arnie Miller, I compared gastropods and bivalves during the Ordovician Radiation to test whether their remarkably similar global diversification was the result of separate ecological and evolutionary histories, or whether they shared a common cause. This research demonstrated that these classes had quite different ecological signatures and evolutionary histories that varied among paleocontinents and among regions within present-day North America. Furthermore, these differences are maintained within individual strata, implying important paleoecological differences in these classes that are responsible for genus-level longevity. Surprisingly, we demonstrated that each class responded to different environmental conditions, with gastropods (the bold line below) favoring shallow, carbonate platforms and bivalves (the dashed line below) favoring areas with high siliclastic influx, such as are found near eroding mountain chains (Fig. 7 from Novack-Gottshall and Miller 2003a). Thus, the similar global-scale diversifications of these Ordovocian mollusks appear to be assembled largely independently from a patchwork of distinct ecological preferences.
Representative publications:
Bennington, J.B., W.A. DiMichele, C. Badgley, R.K. Bambach, P. Barrett, A.K. Behrensmeyer, R. Bobe, R. Burnham, T. Daeschler, J. Van Dam, J. Eronen, D.H. Erwin, S. Finnegan, S. Holland, G. Hunt, D. Jablonski, S.T. Jackson, B. Jacobs, S.M. Kidwell, P. Koch, M. Kowalewski, C. Labandeira, C. Looy, S.K. Lyons, P.M. Novack-Gottshall, R. Potts, P. Roopnarine, C. Strömberg, H. Sues, P. Wagner, P. Wilf, and S. Wing. 2009. Critical issues of scale in paleoecology. Palaios 24: 1-4. (.pdf)
Novack-Gottshall, P.M. and A.I. Miller. 2003a. Comparative geographic and environmental diversity dynamics of gastropods and bivalves during the Ordovician Radiation. Paleobiology 29: 576-604 (.pdf)
Novack-Gottshall, P.M. and A.I. Miller. 2003b. Taxonomic richness and abundance of Late Ordovician gastropods and bivalves in mollusc-rich strata of the Cincinnati Arch. Palaios 18: 559-571 (.pdf)