Community And Structural Collapse During Mass Extinctions

This project is headed by Andrew Beckerman (University of SHeffield) and ALexander Dunhill (University of Leeds) and is focused on linking network structure and extinction events. The main objectives can be briefly summarised as follows:

1. Reconstructing the structure of paleo marine food webs across known hyperthermal events.
2. Predicting primary and secondary extinction sequences and community robustness to past hyperthermal events.
3. Testing the hypothesis that more ancient communities were less robust to secondary extinctions than more marine ecosystems.