Sprecher
Beschreibung
The study of plant-insect interactions in the fossil record is one of particular significance, as it not only gives us a better understanding of the evolution of such relations, through time and space, but also provides information on how said interactions, and by extension the wider ecosystem, reacted to ancient global changes. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) is major but brief environmental crisis that drastically reduced the diversity of plant-insect interactions, at least in North America. Recent studies in other parts of the world, such as South America and Europe, suggested that these effects might have been more regionalised than previously assumed, but the picture is far from clear in Europe, where early Eocene data are sparse.
In this study, we describe the diversity of plant-insect interactions in the Ypresian assemblage of Monte Bolca, in Northern Italy. We then compare these interaction patterns to those observed on older Paleocene assemblages (Gelinden in Belgium, Menat and Sézanne in France). These assemblages reveal a stark increase in interaction diversity following the Paleocene-Eocene boundary, mirroring what had been observed in North America at the same period, although with a much higher Paleocene diversity to start with in Europe. These results contrast with the reactions to the K/Pg extinction, which are far less pronounced in European floras. Finally, we also use this opportunity to generate new protocols to assess the effects of preservation bias in measuring plant-insect interactions, allowing fairer comparisons between assemblages.