EAR-PF: Morphological and ecological disparity of Spiriferida (Brachiopoda) at local, regional, and global scales

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This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). Dr. Judith Sclafani has been awarded an NSF EAR Postdoctoral Fellowship to conduct research, professional development, and outreach activities at the University of California Davis under the mentorship of Dr. Sandra Carlson. Evaluating changing ecosystems during intervals of climate perturbation in Earth’s history can offer important clues to how ecosystems might respond to anthropogenic climate change. This project will focus on the recovery of shallow marine seafloor communities after the second largest mass extinction (~440 million years ago) and investigate whether the evolution of certain biological traits correlates with increased abundance and survivorship with ecological communities. Results of this work will be incorporated into high school Earth Science lessons developed in partnership with the bilingual teacher education program at UC Davis. Shallow marine ecosystems are important for maintaining ocean biodiversity and supporting the economic and cultural services derived from nearshore environments. This means that it is important to both better understand the complex ecological dynamics at play and disseminate information to increase the diversity of scientists addressing these problems.The specific goal of this study is to focus on the order Spiriferida, which was dominant in the middle-late Paleozoic, to: 1) determine whether morphospace occupation is correlated with environmental affinity from global occurrences, and 2) quantify abundance along an environmental gradient from regional stratigraphy. This study will generate substantial new specimen and field-based data about Spiriferida from both continental/global and local/regional scales to examine if data, analyses, and results obtained at smaller scales can be meaningfully extrapolated to trends at larger spatial scales. Combining data from multiple spatial and taxonomic scales is necessary to address ecological hierarchical scaling in the fossil record and understand the fidelity between global Phanerozoic trends and local specimen and field-based data. Studies of the relationship between local sections and global hypotheses are needed to understand the macroecological and macroevolutionary processes responsible for ocean ecosystem structure, stability, and collapse.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.