Kalmar, Attila2013-11-082013-11-0820072007Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-07, Section: B, page: 3891.http://hdl.handle.net/10393/29665http://dx.doi.org/10.20381/ruor-19846Contemporary and Phanerozoic Patterns of Global Biodiversity is a global study testing theories explaining variation in taxic richness, and drawing parallels between contemporary- and paleodiversity. The unifying idea of the thesis is that most of the variation in contemporary and past richness depends on analogous factors: (1) sampling effects, (2) richness-energy relationships, and (3) geometric considerations pertaining to isolation and fragmentation. We present a predictive model of global island biogeography, uniting classic ideas of the Equilibrium Theory of Island Biogeography (ETIB) with the Species-Energy Theory (Chapter 1). We quantify insular isolation and propose an equation to measure the isolation reducing effects of neighboring islands. In Chapter 2 we extend our model to continental parcels of land. We show that area-climate interactions are strong both on continents and on islands. Notwithstanding, species-area slopes do not depend either on distance-based or on historical isolation, in apparent contradiction with some predictions of the ETIB. Thus, broad-scale patterns of diversity on islands and continents are commensurable. In Chapter 3 we evaluate the completeness of the global Phanerozoic record of continental (terrestrial and freshwater) metazoans, aiming to use these data in subsequent chapters. Results of this analysis suggest the relative completeness of the continental fossil record is not markedly inferior to that of the marine fossil record at the taxonomic level of the family and at the stratigraphic level of the stage. The exponential diversification curve of suprageneric continental taxa is unlikely to be the result of rock bias. Chapter 4 adopts a multivariate approach to model variation in fossil diversity. Our main finding is that turnovers of metazoan families are strongly correlated with the number of magnetic polarity reversal records per stratigraphic stage over the Phanerozoic. This suggests that either variation in fossil richness and reversal intensity are both strongly influenced by preservation bias, or that extinction and origination rates have a strong and quantifiable perturbation regime. In Chapter 5 we classify stratigraphic stages into alternating extinction and origination cycles to test for supercyclicity. Paleomagnetic and fossil data both support this hypothesis over the Lower Paleozoic, the Upper Paleozoic and the Mesozoic.277 p.enBiology, Ecology.Paleontology.Thesis