Data from: Contrasting the ecological and taxonomic consequences of extinction

Extinction in the fossil record is most often measured by the percentage
of taxa (species, genera, families, etc.) that go extinct in a certain
time interval. This is a measure of taxonomic loss, but previous work has
indicated that taxonomic loss may be decoupled from the ecological effects
of an extinction. To understand the role extinction plays in ecological
change, extinction should also be measured in terms of loss of functional
diversity. This study tests whether ecological changes increase
correspondingly with taxonomic changes during the Late Ordovician M4/M5
extinction, the Ordovician/Silurian mass extinction, and the Late Devonian
mass extinction. All three extinctions are evaluated with regional data
sets from the eastern United States. Ecological effects are measured by
classifying organisms into ecological lifestyles, which are groups based
on ecological function rather than evolutionary history. The taxonomic and
ecological effects of each extinction are evaluated with additive
diversity partitioning, detrended correspondence analysis, and relative
abundance distributions. Although the largest taxonomic changes occur in
the Ordovician/Silurian extinction, the largest ecological changes occur
in the Late Devonian extinction. These results suggest that the ecological
consequences of extinction need to be considered in addition to the
taxonomic effects of extinction.