Thursday, September 4, 2025
Science
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • SCIENCE NEWS
  • CONTACT US
  • HOME
  • SCIENCE NEWS
  • CONTACT US
No Result
View All Result
Scienmag
No Result
View All Result
Home Science News Chemistry

Marine plankton communities changed long before extinctions

April 23, 2024
in Chemistry
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
Planktonic foraminifera
65
SHARES
595
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
ADVERTISEMENT

For hundreds of millions of years, the oceans have teemed with single-celled organisms called foraminifera, hard-shelled, microscopic creatures at the bottom of the food chain. The fossil record of these primordial specks offers clues into future changes in global biodiversity, related to our warming climate.  

Planktonic foraminifera

Credit: Tracy Aze / University of Leeds

For hundreds of millions of years, the oceans have teemed with single-celled organisms called foraminifera, hard-shelled, microscopic creatures at the bottom of the food chain. The fossil record of these primordial specks offers clues into future changes in global biodiversity, related to our warming climate.  

Using a high-resolution global dataset of planktonic foraminifera fossils that’s among the richest biological archives available to science, researchers have found that major environmental stress events leading to mass extinctions are reliably preceded by subtle changes in how a biological community is composed, acting as a pre-extinction early warning signal.

The results are in Nature, co-led by Anshuman Swain, a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows, researcher in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, and affiliate of the Museum of Comparative Zoology. A physicist by training who applies networks to biological and paleontological data, Swain teamed with co-first author Adam Woodhouse at the University of Bristol to probe the global, community structure of ancient marine plankton that could serve as an early warning system for future extinction of ocean life.  

“Can we leverage the past to understand what might happen in the future, in the context of global change?” said Swain, who previously co-authored a study about the formation of polar ice caps driving changes in marine plankton communities over the last 15 million years. “Our work offers new insight into how biodiversity responds spatially to global changes in climate, especially during intervals of global warmth, which are relevant to future warming projections.”

The researchers used the Triton database, developed by Woodhouse, to ascertain how the composition of foraminifera communities changed over millions of years – orders of magnitude longer time spans than are typically studied at this scale. They focused on the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum, the last major period of sustained high global temperatures since the dinosaurs, analogous to worst-case global warming scenarios.

They found that, before an extinction pulse of 34 million years ago, marine communities became highly specialized everywhere but southern high latitudes, implying that these micro-plankton migrated en masse to higher latitudes and away from the tropics. This finding indicates that community-scale changes like the ones seen in these migration patterns are evident in fossil records long before actual extinctions and losses in biodiversity occur. 

The researchers thus think it’s important to place emphasis on monitoring the structure of biological communities to predict future extinctions.

According to Swain, the results from the foraminifera studies open avenues of inquiry into other organismal groups, including other marine life, sharks, and insects. Such studies may spark a revolution in an emerging field called paleoinformatics, or using large spatiotemporally resolved databases of fossil records to glean new insights into the future Earth.

The researchers’ study was made possible by a longstanding National Science Foundation field study aboard the JOIDES Resolution research vessel, which over the last 55 years has conducted ocean drilling around the world. The project is set to expire this year.



Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-024-07337-9

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Biogeographic response of marine plankton to Cenozoic environmental changes

Article Publication Date

17-Apr-2024

Share26Tweet16
Previous Post

There’s no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to addressing men’s health issues globally

Next Post

Accelerated marine carbon cycling forced by tectonic degassing over the Miocene Climate Optimum

Related Posts

blank
Chemistry

Interfacial Solvation Prepares Oxygen Evolution Transition State

September 3, 2025
blank
Chemistry

NYU Tandon Team Pioneers Innovative Fabrication Method Unlocking Advanced Materials for Quantum Technologies

September 3, 2025
blank
Chemistry

CCNY Physicists Unveil Breakthrough Quantum Emitter in Diamonds

September 3, 2025
blank
Chemistry

Innovative Catalysis Technique Unlocks Diverse Library of Novel Molecules for Drug Discovery

September 3, 2025
blank
Chemistry

Decoding Catalyst Performance for Sustainable Green Hydrogen Production

September 3, 2025
blank
Chemistry

Soft materials retain memories of their past states far longer than previously believed

September 3, 2025
Next Post
Evolutive phase relationship between benthic δ18O and δ13C records at the 405-ka cycle during the Oligo-Miocene.

Accelerated marine carbon cycling forced by tectonic degassing over the Miocene Climate Optimum

  • Mothers who receive childcare support from maternal grandparents show more parental warmth, finds NTU Singapore study

    Mothers who receive childcare support from maternal grandparents show more parental warmth, finds NTU Singapore study

    27544 shares
    Share 11014 Tweet 6884
  • University of Seville Breaks 120-Year-Old Mystery, Revises a Key Einstein Concept

    958 shares
    Share 383 Tweet 240
  • Bee body mass, pathogens and local climate influence heat tolerance

    643 shares
    Share 257 Tweet 161
  • Researchers record first-ever images and data of a shark experiencing a boat strike

    510 shares
    Share 204 Tweet 128
  • Warm seawater speeding up melting of ‘Doomsday Glacier,’ scientists warn

    313 shares
    Share 125 Tweet 78
Science

Embark on a thrilling journey of discovery with Scienmag.com—your ultimate source for cutting-edge breakthroughs. Immerse yourself in a world where curiosity knows no limits and tomorrow’s possibilities become today’s reality!

RECENT NEWS

  • Assessing Agricultural Pollution in Jiangsu’s River Network
  • Affordable Biochar from Coffee Grounds Detects PAHs
  • Analog Optical Computing Advances AI, Optimization
  • Rethinking Dopamine as First-Line Neonatal Therapy

Categories

  • Agriculture
  • Anthropology
  • Archaeology
  • Athmospheric
  • Biology
  • Blog
  • Bussines
  • Cancer
  • Chemistry
  • Climate
  • Earth Science
  • Marine
  • Mathematics
  • Medicine
  • Pediatry
  • Policy
  • Psychology & Psychiatry
  • Science Education
  • Social Science
  • Space
  • Technology and Engineering

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 5,183 other subscribers

© 2025 Scienmag - Science Magazine

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • HOME
  • SCIENCE NEWS
  • CONTACT US

© 2025 Scienmag - Science Magazine

Discover more from Science

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading