Abstract
The extinction of species of small invertebrates is difficult to recognize. However, in deposits that date from the past few million years, insect fossils are remarkably common and provide objective data on the history of the organisms that constitute the biotic communities of the present day. It might have been expected that the great climatic oscillations of the glacial-interglacial cycles should have caused widespread extinctions, if their effects on the large vertebrates is taken as our model. Yet the record of Quaternary fossil insects shows no high extinction rates during this period. Constancy of species and communities of species can be demonstrated to be the norm for at least the last million or so years (= generations). The enigma of how such constancy was sustained in the face of large-scale climatic fluctuations remains a puzzle though several possible solutions are suggested. These solutions carry implications for our estimates of present and future extinction rates.
Keywords
InterglacialGlacial periodEcologyExtinction (optical mineralogy)FaunaInvertebrateClimate changeExtinction eventEctothermQuaternaryPaleontologyBiologyGeographyPopulationBiological dispersal
Affiliated Institutions
Related Publications
Extinction Rates of North American Freshwater Fauna
Abstract: Since 1900, 123 freshwater animal species have been recorded as extinct in North America. Hundreds of additional species of fishes, mollusks, crayfishes, and amphibian...
Biogeography of mammals in SE Asia: estimates of rates of colonization, extinction and speciation
Four categories of islands in SE Asia may be identified on the basis of their histories of landbridge connections. Those islands on the shallow, continental Sunda Shelf were joi...
The Future of Biodiversity
Recent extinction rates are 100 to 1000 times their pre-human levels in well-known, but taxonomically diverse groups from widely different environments. If all species currently...
Dynamics of extinction and the selection of nature reserves
Familiar quantitative reserve-selection techniques are tailored to simple decision problems, where the representation of species is sought at minimum cost. However, conservation...
Late Pleistocene Continental Climate and Oceanic Variability Recorded in Northwest Pacific Sediments
Core V21‐146 provides a continuous record of northwest Pacific pelagic sedimentation spanning the past 530,000 years. Downcore variations of δ 18 O from benthic foraminiferal ca...
Publication Info
- Year
- 1994
- Type
- article
- Volume
- 344
- Issue
- 1307
- Pages
- 19-26
- Citations
- 158
- Access
- Closed
External Links
Social Impact
Altmetric
PlumX Metrics
Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions
Citation Metrics
158
OpenAlex
Cite This
G. Russell Coope
(1994).
The response of insect faunas to glacial-interglacial climatic fluctuations.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
, 344
(1307)
, 19-26.
https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.1994.0046
Identifiers
- DOI
- 10.1098/rstb.1994.0046