Data from: Phylogenetic clustering of origination and extinction across the Late Ordovician mass extinction

Mass extinctions can have dramatic effects on the trajectory of life, but
in some cases the effects can be relatively small even when extinction
rates are high. For example, the Late Ordovician mass extinction is the
second most severe in terms of the proportion of genera eliminated, yet is
noted for the lack of ecological consequences and shifts in clade
dominance. By comparison, the end-Cretaceous mass extinction was less
severe but eliminated several major clades while some rare surviving
clades diversified in the Paleogene. This disconnect may be better
understood by incorporating the phylogenetic relatedness of taxa into
studies of mass extinctions, as the factors driving extinction and
recovery are thought to be phylogenetically conserved and should therefore
promote both origination and extinction of closely related taxa. Here, we
test whether there was phylogenetic selectivity in extinction and
origination using brachiopod genera from the Middle Ordovician through the
Devonian. Using an index of taxonomic clustering (RCL) as a proxy for
phylogenetic clustering, we find that A) both extinctions and originations
shift from taxonomically random or weakly clustered within families in the
Ordovician to strongly clustered in the Silurian and Devonian, beginning
with the recovery following the Late Ordovician mass extinction, and B)
the Late Ordovician mass extinction was itself only weakly clustered. Both
results stand in stark contrast to Cretaceous-Cenozoic bivalves, which
showed significant levels of taxonomic clustering of extinctions in the
Cretaceous, including strong clustering in the mass extinction, but
taxonomically random extinctions in the Cenozoic. The contrasting patterns
between the Late Ordovician and end-Cretaceous events suggest a complex
relationship between the phylogenetic selectivity of mass extinctions and
the long-term phylogenetic signal in origination and extinction patterns.