Search

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. The largest increase in marine biodiversity in Earth's history took place nearly 500 million years ago during a geological period called the Ordovician. This event is well documented based on paleontological data, but its causes are debated. This study uses a numerical model to demonstrate that global climate cooling may have triggered biodiversification at that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The early evolutionary and much of the extinction history of marine animals is thought to be driven by changes in dissolved oxygen concentrations ([O2]) in the ocean1–3. In turn, [O2] is widely assumed to be dominated by the geological history of atmospheric oxygen (pO2)4,5. Here, by contrast, we show by means of a series of Earth system model experiments how continental rearrangement during the Phanerozoic Eon drives profound variations in ocean oxygenation and induces a fundamental decoupling in time between upper-ocean and benthic [O2]. We further identify the presence of state transitions in the global ocean circulation, which lead to extensive deep-ocean anoxia developing in the early Phanerozoic even under modern pO2. Our finding that ocean oxygenation oscillates over stable thousand-year (kyr) periods also provides a causal mechanism that might explain elevated rates of metazoan radiation and extinction during the early Palaeozoic Era6. The absence, in our modelling, of any simple correlation between global climate and ocean ventilation, and the occurrence of profound variations in ocean oxygenation independent of atmospheric pO2, presents a challenge to the interpretation of marine redox proxies, but also points to a hitherto unrecognized role for continental configuration in the evolution of the biosphere.Analysis of a series of Earth system model experiments shows that continental rearrangement during the Phanerozoic had a marked influence on variations in ocean oxygenation, independent of atmospheric pO2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visible light communications (VLC) are an emerging technology that uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and photodiodes to provide high-speed communication between devices employing the visible light spectrum. Taking advantage of a large unregulated spectrum with capacity for gigabit per second data rates, VLC has the potential to enable the more recent and future telecommunications technologies, such as IoT, 5G and beyond, to unlock their full capabilities, either acting as a sole solution or supporting traditional radiofrequency communications. One of the goals of VLC is to employ illumination LEDs as access points. In this paper we analyze the communication and illumination performance of an LED lamp. Both theoretical and experimental analysis are conducted and results compared. Theoretical analysis are conducted with VLC mathematical model and also with ray-tracing simulations employing the a commercial software. We show that the LED lamp is capable of providing both communication and illumination simultaneously under the proposed scenario. Our results present strong correlation between theoretical and experimental results, indicating that the theoretical model is robust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fossil record of marine invertebrates has long fuelled the debate as to whether or not there are limits to global diversity in the sea1–5. Ecological theory states that, as diversity grows and ecological niches are filled, the strengthening of biological interactions imposes limits on diversity6,7. However, the extent to which biological interactions have constrained the growth of diversity over evolutionary time remains an open question1–5,8–11. Here we present a regional diversification model that reproduces the main Phanerozoic eon trends in the global diversity of marine invertebrates after imposing mass extinctions. We find that the dynamics of global diversity are best described by a diversification model that operates widely within the exponential growth regime of a logistic function. A spatially resolved analysis of the ratio of diversity to carrying capacity reveals that less than 2% of the global flooded continental area throughout the Phanerozoic exhibits diversity levels approaching ecological saturation. We attribute the overall increase in global diversity during the Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras to the development of diversity hotspots under prolonged conditions of Earth system stability and maximum continental fragmentation. We call this the ‘diversity hotspots hypothesis’, which we propose as a non-mutually exclusive alternative to the hypothesis that the Mesozoic marine revolution led this macroevolutionary trend12,13.The diversity hotspots hypothesis attributes the overall increase in global diversity during the Late Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras to the development of diversity hotspots under prolonged conditions of Earth system stability and maximum continental fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marine ecosystems with a diverse range of animal groups became established during the early Cambrian (~541 to ~509 Ma). However, Earth's environmental parameters and palaeogeography in this interval of major macro-evolutionary change remain poorly constrained. Here, we test contrasting hypotheses of continental configuration and climate that have profound implications for interpreting Cambrian environmental proxies. We integrate general circulation models and geological observations to test three variants of the 'Antarctocentric' paradigm, with a southern polar continent, and an 'equatorial' configuration that lacks polar continents. This quantitative framework can be applied to other deep-time intervals when environmental proxy data are scarce. Our results show that the Antarctocentric palaeogeographic paradigm can reconcile geological data and simulated Cambrian climate. Our analyses indicate a greenhouse climate during the Cambrian animal radiation, with mean annual sea-surface temperatures between ~9 °C to ~19 °C and ~30 °C to ~38 °C for polar and tropical palaeolatitudes, respectively. There is a lot of uncertainty about what Earth's climate and geography were like in the early Cambrian, when animal life diversified throughout the oceans. Here we show that numeric comparisons of model simulations and climatically influenced rocks can help constrain geography and climate during this time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scientists have long sought to understand what drives biodiversity changes. A study unifies ideas about marine and terrestrial biodiversity in one explanatory framework, pointing to physical geography as dictating life’s trajectory.Physical geography offers a way to explain marine and plant biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Platform carbonates are a major component of the Earth system, but their spatial distribution through geological times is difficult to reconstruct, due to the incompleteness of geological records, sampling heterogeneity, and their intrinsic complexity. Beyond this complexity, carbonates are not randomly distributed in the world oceans, neither in the modern nor in the past, and thus, global trends exist. In the present review, we focus on the understanding of the spatial distribution of carbonate production at a global scale. We use a deterministic approach, which focuses on discriminating components, stratigraphic architectures, and environmental features to relate shallow-water carbonate production to oceanographic parameters. The work is based on extensive literature reviews on carbonate platforms. Ecological niche modelling coupled with deep-time general circulation models is used to calibrate a predictive tool of carbonate factory distribution. A carbonate factory function is set up that is based on sea-surface oceanographic parameters (temperature, salinity, and primary productivity). The model was tested using remote-sensing and in situ oceanographic data of Modern times, while outputs of paleoceanographic models are utilized for Lower Aptian (Cretaceous) modelling. The approach allows determining four neritic carbonate factories that are called the marine biochemical, photozoan, photo-C-, and heterozoan factories. The model finely simulates the global distribution of Lower Aptian and Modern carbonate platforms. Carbonate factories appear to thrive for specific ranges along the environmental gradient of carbonate saturation. This conceptual scheme appears to be able to provide a simple, universal model of paleoclimatic zones of shallow-water marine carbonates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prediction of carbonate distributions at a global scale through geological time represents a challenging scientific issue, which is critical for carbonate reservoir studies and the understanding of past and future climate changes. Such prediction is even more challenging because no numerical spatial model allows for the prediction of shallow-water marine carbonates in the Modern. This study proposes to fill this gap by providing for the first time a global quantitative model based on the identification of carbonate factories and associated environmental affinities. The relationships among the four carbonate factories, i.e., "biochemical", "photozoan-T", "photo-C" and "heterozoan-C" factories, and sea-surface oceanographic parameters (i.e., temperature, salinity and marine primary productivity) is first studied using spatial analysis. The sea-surface temperature seasonality is shown to be the dominant steering parameter discriminating the carbonate factories. Then, spatial analysis is used to calibrate different carbonate factory functions that predict oceanic zones favorable to specific carbonate factories. Our model allows the mapping of the global distribution of modern carbonate factories with an 82% accuracy. This modeling framework represents a powerful tool that can be adapted and coupled to general circulation models to predict the spatial distribution of past and future shallow-water marine carbonates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]