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A European monsoon-like climate in a warmhouse world
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The middle Eocene warmhouse period (45 million years ago) featured atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations equivalent to those projected under high future emission scenarios. Seasonal- to weather timescale climate reconstructions from this period can provide critical insight into the impact of Anthropogenic warming on intra-annual variability in temperature and precipitation. Here, we combine daily-scale reconstructions of the evolution of temperature and the water cycle in western Europe based on stable oxygen and clumped isotope analyses on the fastest-growing gastropod known in the fossil record: Campanile giganteum. Our dataset shows that the middle Eocene of western Europe featured monsoon-like conditions, with seawater temperatures of ˊ24 °C during mild and wet winters, 30 °C during hot and dry spring and autumn seasons, and ˊ28 °C during warm and comparatively wet summers. Coupled climate model simulations using the Community Earth System Model indicate these seasonal variations in temperature and precipitation were driven by shifting atmospheric and oceanic circulation regimes over Western Europe, with winds from different directions bringing distinct waters to the region and minimal wind during spring reducing cooling through diminished latent heat flux. Our results highlight that Europe may experience wetter summers with more frequent extreme rainfall events under future high emissions scenarios.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2025 OA
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A first glimpse into the biogeographic affinities of the shallow benthic communities from the sub-Antarctic Crozet archipelago
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Sub-Antarctic islands are expected to show a high degree of endemicity due to their remoteness. However, biogeographic affinities in the sub-Antarctic remain poorly understood, especially in the marine realm. Sub-Antarctic islands being at the crossroads between Antarctic and cold temperate regions, biodiversity characterization and biogeographic analyses are a priority for monitoring and rapidly assessing variations associated with environmental changes. One underexplored sub-Antarctic area is Crozet, a protected archipelago located halfway between Antarctica and South Africa. In this study, we investigated the shallow-water Crozet macrofaunal diversity, distribution patterns and biogeographic affinities based on the examination of fieldwork specimens via a thorough morphological identification and a genetic characterisation. The resulting dataset provides an important baseline for further studies and conservation strategies, compiling the first genetic and taxonomic database for the Crozet archipelago. In total, 100 morphotypes were found, belonging to nine different phyla, among whicharthropods(32), molluscs (18)and echinoderms (17) were the richest. Forty-seven morphotypes were identified to the species level, among which 20 were reported in Crozet for the first time. This confirms that Crozet is a poorly known region, even compared to other sub-Antarctic areas. A large proportion of species (62%) had circum Southern Ocean or circum sub Antarctic distributions. These species were mostly shared with Kerguelen (72%), the Magellan Province (64%), and Prince Edward Islands (64%), confirming the patterns found in macroalgae and specific macrofaunal groups. However, this large-distribution statement needs to be counterbalanced by the detection (genetic data) of more restricted distributions than expected in four study cases (the tanaid Apseudes spectabilis, the nudibranch Doris kerguelenensis, the polychaete Neanthes kerguelensis and the chiton Hemiarthrum setulosum). Considering that most morphotypes had no genetic data available from other regions, the proportion of morphotypes with restricted distribution is likely to increase alongside future investigations. In addition, we also found a few cases of unrecognized diversity that might lead to the descriptions of new species, some likely to be endemic to Crozet (e.g., within the polychaete genus Harmothoe and the bryozoan genus Antarctothoa). Altogether, this stresses the need to maintain conservation efforts in Crozet and pursue integrative investigations in order to highlight and protect its unusual diversity
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RBINS Staff Publications 2024
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A first, local DNA barcode reference database of the forensically important flies (Diptera) of the island of La Reunion
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RBINS Staff Publications 2017
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A giant chelonioid turtle from the Late Cretaceous of Morocco with a suction feeding apparatus unique among tetrapods
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RBINS Staff Publications
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A global approach for natural history museum collections
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Integration of the world’s natural history collections can provide a resource for decision-makers Over the past three centuries, people have collected objects and specimens and placed them in natural history museums throughout the world. Taken as a whole, this global collection is the physical basis for our understanding of the natural world and our place in it, an unparalleled source of information that is directly relevant to issues as diverse as wildlife conservation, climate change, pandemic preparedness, food security, invasive species, rare minerals, and the bioeconomy (1). Strategic coordination and use of the global collection has the potential to focus future collecting and guide decisions that are relevant to the future of humanity and biodiversity. To begin to map the aggregate holdings of the global collection, we describe here a simple and fast method to assess the contents of any natural history museum, and report results based on our assessment of 73 of the world’s largest natural history museums and herbaria from 28 countries.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2023
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A global database for metacommunity ecology: integrating species, traits, environment and space
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RBINS Staff Publications 2020
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A global meta-analysis on the drivers of salt marsh planting success and implications for ecosystem services
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Planting has been widely adopted to battle the loss of salt marshes and to establish living shorelines. However, the drivers of success in salt marsh planting and their ecological effects are poorly understood at the global scale. Here, we assemble a global database, encompassing 22,074 observations reported in 210 studies, to examine the drivers and impacts of salt marsh planting. We show that, on average, 53% of plantings survived globally, and plant survival and growth can be enhanced by careful design of sites, species selection, and novel planted technologies. Planting enhances shoreline protection, primary productivity, soil carbon storage, biodiversity conservation and fishery production (effect sizes = 0.61, 1.55, 0.21, 0.10 and 1.01, respectively), compared with degraded wetlands. However, the ecosystem services of planted marshes, except for shoreline protection, have not yet fully recovered compared with natural wetlands (effect size = −0.25, 95% CI −0.29, −0.22). Fortunately, the levels of most ecological functions related to climate change mitigation and biodiversity increase with plantation age when compared with natural wetlands, and achieve equivalence to natural wetlands after 5–25 years. Overall, our results suggest that salt marsh planting could be used as a strategy to enhance shoreline protection, biodiversity conservation and carbon sequestration.
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RBINS Staff Publications 2024
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A land micro-mammal fauna from the Early Eocene marine Egem deposits (NP12, Belgium) and the first occurrence of the peradectid marsupial Armintodelphys outside North America
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Dental remains of land mammals are sometimes discovered in shallow marine Paleogene deposits of the North Sea Basin. Such is the case for eleven specimens we describe here from the Early Eocene Egemkapel Clay Member in the middle part of the Tielt Formation, found in Ampe quarry at Egem in Northwestern Belgium. The small fauna consists of 6 taxa, including the neoplagiaulacid multituberculate Ectypodus, the erinaceomorph insectivore Macrocranion, the nyctitheriid Leptacodon, an eochiropteran bat possibly belonging to a palaeochiropterygid, an unidentified perissodactyl possibly belonging to an equoid, and a new species of the peradectid marsupial Armintodelphys. The latter represents the first European occurrence of the genus, which was previously only known from the North American late Early and early Middle Eocene of the Wind River and Green River basins in Wyoming and the Uinta Basin in Utah. Biogeographic and biostratigraphic analyses of peradectid marsupials suggest that Armintodelphys dispersed between North America and Europe around the time of the Early Eocene Climatic Optimum. The Egemkapel Clay Member has been dated as middle NP12, early late Ypresian, whereas the Egem mammal fauna can be correlated to the fauna of Avenay from the Paris Basin, which is the international reference-level MP8+9 of the mammalian biochronological scale for the European Paleogene.
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RBINS Staff Publications
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A large Late Miocene cetotheriid (Cetacea, Mysticeti) from the Netherlands clarifies the status of Tranatocetidae
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RBINS Staff Publications 2019
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A late surviving Pliocene seal from high latitudes of the North Atlantic realm: the latest monachine seal on the southern margin of the North Sea
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RBINS Staff Publications 2018
