Decoupled plant and insect diversity after the end-cretaceous extinction

Peter Daniel Wilf, Conrad C. Labandaira, Kirk R. Johnson, Beth Ellis

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

129 Scopus citations

Abstract

Food web recovery from mass extinction is poorly understood. We analyzed insect-feeding damage on 14,999 angiosperm leaves from 14 latest Cretaceous, Paleocene, and early Eocene sites in the western interior United States. Most Paleocene floras have low richness of plants and of insect damage. However, a low-diversity 64.4-million-year-old flora from southeastern Montana shows extremely high insect damage richness, especially of leaf mining, whereas an anomalously diverse 63.8-million-year-old flora from the Denver Basin shows little damage and virtually no specialized feeding. These findings reveal severely unbalanced food webs 1 to 2 million years after the end-Cretaceous extinction 65.5 million years ago.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1112-1115
Number of pages4
JournalScience
Volume313
Issue number5790
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 25 2006

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General

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