TY - JOUR
T1 - Impact of the terminal Cretaceous event on plant-insect associations
AU - Labandeira, Conrad C.
AU - Johnson, Kirk R.
AU - Wilf, Peter
PY - 2002/2/19
Y1 - 2002/2/19
N2 - Evidence for a major extinction of insect herbivores is provided by presence-absence data for 51 plant-insect associations on 13,441 fossil plant specimens, spanning the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary in southwestern North Dakota. The most specialized associations, which were diverse and abundant during the latest Cretaceous, almost disappeared at the boundary and failed to recover in younger strata even while generalized associations regained their Cretaceous abundances. These results are consistent with a sudden ecological perturbation that precipitated a diversity bottleneck for insects and plants.
AB - Evidence for a major extinction of insect herbivores is provided by presence-absence data for 51 plant-insect associations on 13,441 fossil plant specimens, spanning the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary in southwestern North Dakota. The most specialized associations, which were diverse and abundant during the latest Cretaceous, almost disappeared at the boundary and failed to recover in younger strata even while generalized associations regained their Cretaceous abundances. These results are consistent with a sudden ecological perturbation that precipitated a diversity bottleneck for insects and plants.
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U2 - 10.1073/pnas.042492999
DO - 10.1073/pnas.042492999
M3 - Article
C2 - 11854501
AN - SCOPUS:0037133350
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 99
SP - 2061
EP - 2066
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 4
ER -