Elsevier

Earth-Science Reviews

Volume 138, November 2014, Pages 215-230
Earth-Science Reviews

Complex response of dinoflagellate cyst distribution patterns to cooler early Oligocene oceans

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earscirev.2014.02.004Get rights and content

Abstract

Previous studies have made extensive use of dinoflagellate cysts to reconstruct past sea surface temperature (SST). Analysis of associations of dinoflagellate cysts using two new ocean datasets for the mid Eocene (Bartonian) and early Oligocene (Rupelian) reveals clear latitudinally constrained distributions for the Bartonian, but unexpected changes in their Rupelian distribution; a significant number of species with low and mid latitude northern hemisphere occurrences in the Bartonian extend their northward ranges in the Rupelian, including some forms characterised as ‘warm water’ by previous studies. This suggests either that dinoflagellates are faithfully tracking a complex oceanographic response to Rupelian cooling, or that dinoflagellate sensitivity/adaptability to a range of ecological variables means that at a global scale their distributions are not primarily controlled by sea surface temperature-variability.

Previous use of dinoflagellate cysts for palaeoclimate work has relied on rather subjective and inconsistent identification of ‘warm’ and ‘cold’ water forms, rather than comprehensive analysis of community associations at the global-scale. It is clear from this study that a better understanding of the (palaeo-)ecology of dinoflagellates and their cysts is required.

Rupelian dinoflagellate cyst distribution may reflect changes in a range of environmental variables linked to early Oligocene climate-cooling, for example changes in nutrient fluxes triggered by glacially-induced base-level fall; complex reorganisation of ocean current systems between the Bartonian and Rupelian, or muted changes to Rupelian summer SSTs in the northern hemisphere that have previously been reported. Many extant dinoflagellate species also exhibit relatively broad temperature tolerance. Moreover, they have potentially extensive cryptic diversity, and are able to produce dormant cysts during short-lived environmental deterioration, all of which may act to limit the value of undifferentiated dinoflagellate cyst assemblages for identifying climate signals.

Introduction

Previous work by Salzmann et al. (2008) and Pound et al., 2011, Pound et al., 2012 has established a robust database methodology (Tertiary Environments Vegetation System — TEVIS) for interpreting patterns of Cenozoic vegetation using data ‘mined’ from historical literature. Similarly, Vandenbroucke et al. (2010) used multivariate analysis of published occurrences of the enigmatic Chitinozoa to examine sea surface temperature (SST) relationships in the Late Ordovician. Here, we adapt the TEVIS methodology to obtain data from published literature on dinoflagellate cysts, and use them as a proxy for investigating the response of the marine realm to cooling at the Eocene–Oligocene transition. Dinoflagellates have formed a component of the microplankton in aquatic ecosystems since the Mid Triassic. They are ubiquitous in modern oceans, as well as brackish and freshwater environments, and include phototrophic, heterotrophic and mixotrophic species (Fensome et al., 1993, Jeong et al., 2010). Their fossilised organic remains (cysts) are the basis for biostratigraphical schemes (Brinkhuis and Biffi, 1993, Williams et al., 2004, Van Simaeys et al., 2005) and palaeoenvironmental analysis (Versteegh and Zonneveld, 1994, Sluijs et al., 2005). Their use to discriminate between offshore to near-shore environments (Wall et al., 1977, Dale, 1996) has made them invaluable for the identification of different systems tracts in sequence stratigraphy (Brinkhuis, 1994, Sluijs et al., 2005), and the apparent strong relationship between the global distribution of extant marine dinoflagellates and SST (e.g. Marret and Zonneveld, 2003, Zonneveld et al., 2013) has formed the basis of their widespread use in palaeoclimate reconstruction and tracking palaeoclimate oscillations (Wall et al., 1977, Brinkhuis and Biffi, 1993, Brinkhuis et al., 1998, Mudie et al., 2001, Sluijs et al., 2005, Esper and Zonneveld, 2007, Masure and Vrielynck, 2009).

This work reconstructs global distributions of dinoflagellate cysts between a warmer mid Eocene (Bartonian) Earth and a cooler early Oligocene (Rupelian) Earth, and uses multivariate analysis and range data to investigate the extent to which these patterns are significant for understanding the pattern of ocean temperature change across the Eocene–Oligocene boundary. We also explore how our results might reveal potential weaknesses in the ability of dinoflagellate cysts to track global climate change. We examine the hypothesis that at a global scale, dinoflagellate cyst latitudinal distributions shifted equatorward from the late mid Eocene to the early Oligocene in response to climate cooling. Published data on planktonic foraminifera in Tanzania, showing a major faunal turnover and size reduction of individual species at the Eocene/Oligocene boundary, suggests that even the modest SST reductions at low latitudes had a significant impact on marine habitats (Wade and Pearson, 2008), and a strong biotic signal in dinoflagellate cyst data from this time interval might therefore be anticipated. Previous studies using dinoflagellate cysts to track Eocene and/or Oligocene climate change (e.g. Brinkhuis and Biffi, 1993, Brinkhuis, 1994, Guerstein et al., 2008, Bijl et al., 2011) have tended to focus on relatively limited geographical areas, rather than adopting a methodology to track ocean-wide species responses across this time interval.

Section snippets

Background

A transition in global climate state began in the latest Eocene (Wade et al., 2012), probably triggered by a reduction in atmospheric CO2 below a critical threshold (DeConto and Pollard, 2003, Pearson et al., 2009, Anderson et al., 2011, Pagani et al., 2011). It culminated in the establishment of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet associated with further cooling in the early Oligocene, termed Oi-1. The widely recognised early Oligocene cooling event (Wei, 1991, Eldrett et al., 2009, Liu et al., 2009)

Material

Two stratigraphically well-defined time slabs were selected for dinoflagellate cyst analysis; the Bartonian (late mid Eocene; 41.2–37.8 Ma) and Rupelian (early Oligocene; 33.9–28.1 Ma) (Fig. 2, Fig. 3). Time slabs were chosen for optimum potential for climate contrast between them, whilst minimising both temporal separation and the influence of transient climate effects within them. The Priabonian (latest Eocene) is less attractive for investigation. It straddles the onset of the climate cooling

Method

We used ordination techniques to study relationships between sample sites on the basis of their full dinoflagellate cyst composition (presence/absence data). Ordination techniques allow visualisation of large datasets in low-dimensional (usually two-dimensional) ordination diagrams, in which the ordination axes represent the most important gradients in species composition (Jongman et al., 1995). These can then be related to known environmental variation, i.e. palaeolatitude, depositional basin

Results

DCA of the global Bartonian and Rupelian datasets shows that southern hemisphere communities are clearly different from northern hemisphere communities in both time slabs (Fig. 5; see 7). Because latitudinal coverage of sample sites is poor in the southern hemisphere, we decided to restrict further ordination analyses to the northern hemisphere sites.

After omitting the 14 southern hemisphere samples and two outlier samples (B57 and B58), we performed DCA on the remaining northern hemisphere

Interpretation

The starting hypothesis for this paper was that, based on previous use of dinoflagellate cysts in palaeoclimate work (Wall et al., 1977, Brinkhuis and Biffi, 1993, Brinkhuis et al., 1998, Mudie et al., 2001, Sluijs et al., 2005, Esper and Zonneveld, 2007, Masure and Vrielynck, 2009), and on current understanding of extant dinoflagellate distributions (Marret and Zonneveld, 2003, Zonneveld et al., 2013): 1) dinoflagellate cyst assemblages as a whole would robustly track global climate change at

Discussion

Zonneveld et al. (2013) determined that latitudinal gradient was the most important influence on their dataset of modern dinoflagellates, and that SST, phosphate and nitrate concentrations are the most significant environmental variables that can be related to modern distribution patterns. In this context, it is striking that both community-level analysis of the northern hemisphere dinoflagellate cyst assemblages (i.e. DCA results) and latitudinal range plots identify apparently paradoxical

Conclusions

This study has sought to investigate Eocene–Oligocene climate change using published data on the occurrence of dinoflagellate cysts; to understand the pattern of change in distribution between the Bartonian and Rupelian; the extent to which this distribution is likely to faithfully track changes in SST, and the implications this has for understanding the consequences of early Oligocene global cooling; the extent to which these distributions are likely to be unrelated to changes in SST, and the

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the BGS Climate Change Research Programme directed by Dr Michael A. Ellis. We are grateful to Emily Peckover (University of Leicester) for assisting with data compilation, and to Stewart G. Molyneux and Ian P. Wilkinson (British Geological Survey) for early reviews of this manuscript. MAW and JBR publish with the permission of the Executive Director, British Geological Survey (NERC). TRAV acknowledges financial support from the French “Agence Nationale de la

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