Research: Ecological restructuring of hard substrate communities across the K-T boundary
The Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) mass extinction had a significant impact on marine life. The extinctions that occurred are thought to be associated with a collapse in photosynthesis, which significantly disrupted the food chain.
Hard substrates allow excellent 
opportunities for studying evolutionary palaeoecology. As the encrusting and boring organisms are preserved in-situ, they allow a unique insight into past ecological interactions between a diverse range of taxa. The study of hard substrates at mass extinction may indicate important trends in extinction, survival and recovery, and their evolutionary implications, which may not be evident in palaeontological data elsewhere. This project aims to study the changes in diversity and abundance of hard substrate faunas across the mass extinction event.
Additionally, it is suggested that the effects of a mass extinction are not latitudinally uniform. As well as analysing hard substrate communities before and after the K-T boundary, they will be compared across different localities. Specimens have been collected from fieldwork in Maastricht, the Netherlands and in Alabama and Mississippi, USA. Collections from Seymour Island, Antarctica provide a high latitude locality.
This is a NERC funded PhD supervised by Liz Harper (University of Cambridge) and Paul Taylor (Natural History Museum, London).
Caroline E. Sogot
Research Student 2009
+44 (0) 1223 333416
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Downing Site / N313
Last updated on 09-Sep-10 11:29