PRIME – Prediction and Identification of Mass Extinctions
“Extinctions are a fundamental part of evolution…we are at the beginning of a contemporary mass extinction event.“
Project leaders
(University of Leeds, UK)
(University Zurich, now GFZ Helmholtz Potsdam)
Extinctions are a fundamental part of evolution, but high numbers of extinctions in a relatively short period of time can result in extinction cascades, with unprecedented changes in ecosystem structure, causing ecosystem collapse and low levels of diversity that persist for millions of years. Life on Earth has experienced several major biodiversity crises in the past, known as mass extinction events. However, there is still no consensus on what qualifies a biodiversity fluctuation as a mass extinction event.
This workshop will focus on
- What is a mass extinction?
- Are mass extinctions temporally scale-independent?
- How can the fossil record of extinct communities be used to inform biodiversity dynamics of extant communities?
- Is it possible to predict mass extinctions?
Group members
Daniele Silvestro (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), Zhen Xu (University of Leeds, UK), Andrej Spiridonov (Vilnius University, Lithuania), Eileen Straube (University of Bayreuth, Germany), William Foster (University of Hamburg, Germany), Roger A. Close (University of Oxford, UK), Junxuan Fan (Nanjing University, China), Sara Varela González (University of Vigo, Spain), Jenny L. McGuire (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA), Matthew Clapham (UC Santa Cruz, USA), Steve C. Wang (Swarthmore College, USA), Ádám Kocsis (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany), Rachel Warnock (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany), Wolfgang Kiessling (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany), Elizabeth Dowding (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany), Emma Dunne (FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany)
Group photo of the workshop in May
From the left: Rachel Warnock, Junxuan Fan, Danijela Dimitrijevic, Wolfgang Kiessling, Baran Karapunar, Matthew Clapham, Eileen Straube, William Foster, Bethany Allen, Adam Kocsis, Roger Close, Elizabeth Dowding, Andrej Spiridonov, Zhen Xu