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