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The 30th Anniversary of the Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems (ETE) Program

Public Program: Survivors - What Fossils Tell Us about the Past and Future

On the evening of March 30th, the ETE Program held a public event in Q?rius to mark its 30th anniversary of research, education, and outreach about terrestrial ecosystems through geological time. 

This event was included in the “After Hours” and “Anthropocene: Life in the Age of Humans” discussion series at NMNH, but pioneered a new format, with a series of talks combined with hands-on activities.  ETE co-directors Kay Behrensmeyer and Kate Lyons, along with ETE post-doctoral fellow Silvia Pineda-Munoz, collaborated with the NMNH Office of Education and Outreach and the staff and volunteers of Q?rius to plan and produce the evening program.

Publications

  • Grímsson, F., Zetter, R., Labandeira, C.C., Engel, M.S. and Wappler, T., 2017. Taxonomic description of in situ bee pollen from the middle Eocene of Germany. Grana, 56(1): 37-70.
  • Buatois, L.A., Labandeira, C.C., Mángano, M.G., Cohen, A. and Voigt, S., 2016. The Mesozoic Lacustrine Revolution. In The Trace-Fossil Record of Major Evolutionary Events: 179-263. Springer Netherlands.
  • Davis, M., and S. Pineda-Munoz. 2016. The temporal scale of diet and dietary proxies. Ecology and Evolution: 6, 1883-1897
  • Greenwalt, D.E. and Moulton, J.K. 2016. The first fossil New World Dixidae with a critical discussion of generic definitions. Palaeontologia Electronica, 19(3): 1-32.
  • Labandeira, C.C., Rodríguez-Tovar, F.J. and Uchman, A., 2016. The End-Cretaceous Extinction and Ecosystem Change. In The Trace-Fossil Record of Major Evolutionary Events: 265-300. Springer Netherlands.
  • Labandeira, C.C., Yang, Q., Santiago-Blay, J.A., Hotton, C.L., Monteiro, A., Wang, Y.-J., Goreva, J., Shih, C.K., Sijlström, S., Rose, T.R., Dilcher, D.L., and Ren, D. 2016. The evolutionary convergence of mid-Mesozoic Iacewings and Cenozoic butterflies. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 283 (184)
  • Lin, X., Shih, M.J.H., Labandeira, C.C., and Ren, D. 2016. New mesopsychids (Insecta: Mecoptera) from the Middle Jurassic of China shed light on the phylogeny and origin of the proboscis in the Mesopsychidae. BMC Evolutionary Biology 16:1
  • Kathleen Lyons, S., Amatangelo, K. L., Behrensmeyer, A. K., Bercovici, A., Blois, J. L., Davis, M., Dimichele, W. A., Du, A., Eronen, J. T., Tyler Faith, J., Graves, G. R., Jud, N., Labandeira, C., Looy, C. V., Mcgill, B., Miller, J. H., Patterson, D., Pineda-Munoz, S., Potts, R., Riddle, B., Terry, R., Tóth, A., Ulrich, W., Villaseñor, A., Wing, S., Anderson, H., Anderson, J., Waller, D. & Gotelli, N. J. 2016. Holocene shifts in the assembly of plant and animal communities implicate human impacts. Nature, 529, 80-83.
  • Lyons, S. K., Miller, J. H., Amatangelo, K. L, Behrensmeyer, A. K., Bercovici, A., Blois, J. L., Davis, M., DiMichele, W. A., Du, A., Eronen, J. T., Faith, J. T., Graves, G. R., Jud, N., Labandeira, C., Looy, C. V., McGill, B, Patterson, D., Pineda-Munoz, S. Potts, R., Riddle, B., Terry, R., Tóth, A., Ulrich, W., Villaseñor, A., Wing, S., Anderson, H., Anderson, J., and Gotelli, N. J. 2016. Reply to How foreign is the past. Nature 538(7626):E3-E4.
  • Lyons, S. K., J. H. Miller, A. Tóth, K. L. Amatangelo, A. K. Behrensmeyer, A. Bercovici, J. L. Blois, M. Davis, W. A. DiMichelle, A. Du, J. T. Eronen, J. T. Faith, G. R. Graves, N. Jud, C. Labandeira, C. V. Looy, B. McGill, D. Patterson, S. Pineda-Munoz, R. Potts, B. Riddle, R. Terry, W. Ulrich, A. Villaseñor, S. Wing, H. Anderson, J. Anderson, and N. J. Gotelli. 2016b. Lyons et al. reply. Nature 537(7618):E5-E6.
  • Lyons, S. K., K. L. Amatangelo, A. K. Behrensmeyer, A. Bercovici, J. L. Blois, M. Davis, W. A. DiMichele, A. Du, J. T. Eronen, J. T. Faith, G. R. Graves, N. Jud, C. Labandeira, C. V. Looy, B. McGill, J. H. Miller, D. Patterson, S. Pineda-Munoz, R. Potts, B. Riddle, R. Terry, A. Tóth, W. Ulrich, A. Villaseñor, S. Wing, H. Anderson, J. Anderson, D. Waller, and N. J. Gotelli. 2016. Corrigendum: Holocene shifts in the assembly of plant and animal communities implicate human impacts. Nature advance online publication.
  • Minter, N.J., Buatois, L.A., Mángano, M.G., Davies, N.S., Gibling, M.R. and Labandeira, C., 2016. The establishment of continental ecosystems. In The Trace-Fossil Record of Major Evolutionary Events: 205-324. Springer Netherlands.
  • Pineda-Munoz, S., A. Evans, and J. Alroy. 2016. The relationship between diet and body mass in terrestrial mammals. Paleobiology Paleobiology 42(4): 1-11.
  • Pineda-Munoz, S., I.A. Lazagabaster, J. Alroy and A.R. Evans. 2016. Inferring diet from dental morphology in terrestrial mammals. Methods in Ecology and Evolution. doi:10.1111/2041-210X.12691

The ETE Book

Terrestrial Ecosystems Through Time: Evolutionary Paleoecology of Terrestrial Plants and Animals

Anna K. Behrensmeyer, John D. Damuth, William A. DiMichele, Richard Potts, Hans-Dieter Sues, and Scott L. Wing

Cover of the Book Terrestrial Ecosystems through Time

Breathtaking in scope, this is the first survey of the entire ecological history of life on land—from the earliest traces of terrestrial organisms over 400 million years ago to the beginning of human agriculture. By providing myriad insights into the unique ecological information contained in the fossil record, it establishes a new and ambitious basis for the study of evolutionary paleoecology of land ecosystems. 

A joint undertaking of the Evolution of Terrestrial Ecosystems Consortium at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, and twenty-six additional researchers, this book begins with four chapters that lay out the theoretical background and methodology of the science of evolutionary paleoecology. Included are a comprehensive review of the taphonomy and paleoenvironmental settings of fossil deposits as well as guidelines for developing ecological characterizations of extinct organisms and the communities in which they lived. The remaining three chapters treat the history of terrestrial ecosystems through geological time, emphasizing how ecological interactions have changed, the rate and tempo of ecosystem change, the role of exogenous "forcing factors" in generating ecological change, and the effect of ecological factors on the evolution of biological diversity.

Check it out here