Data for: Insights for modern invasion ecology from biotic changes of the Clarksville Phase of the Richmondian Invasion (Ordovician, Katian)

The frequency of biotic invasions in modern ecosystems is increasing due to global trade moving taxa outside their native ranges and climate change facilitating establishment of taxa in previously inhospitable regions. Thus, developing a holistic understanding of biotic invasions and how they impact ecosystems over different timescales—from annual to geologic time scales—is vital. Herein we examine a geologically brief invasion event, the Clarksville Phase of the Richmondian Invasion. Prior analyses have established general ecological and evolutionary patterns across the entire Richmondian Invasion, but recent sequence stratigraphic refinement makes analysis of individual invasion pulses possible for the first time. We examine biotic change across the Clarksville Phase and identify invasion impacts on diversity, paleocommunity composition, and niche stability. Invader arrival and success were strongly linked to increased propagule pressure facilitated by sea level changes. Invaders init..., Data Collection
To quantify how paleocommunity structure changed across the Clarksville Phase of the Richmondian Invasion, paleocommunity parameters were reconstructed from genus-level count data of fossil taxa collected from bedding planes using quadrat sampling. Sampling was conducted at multiple stratigraphic horizons during and after the Clarksville Pulse of the Richmondian Invasion, across a range of depositional environments within the Cincinnati Basin. In this study, a paleocommunity or community is defined as a generalized group of taxa that characterize a particular environment and may represent a segment of a biotic gradient and is synonymous with the biofacies of Brett et al. (2007). Paleocommunities represent the preserved biota and not the complete set of organisms (the ecological community) present during deposition.
The primary data collected for this study are counts of macrofaunal invertebrate fossils exposed on bedding plane surfaces. Fossil count data were collected f...,