Reproducibility of Biovolumetric Parameters in Community Reconstruction

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1984-06

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Criticisms have been raised about the inadequacies of methods in community paleoecological analysis. Until recently, most paleoecological studies were done by specialists in individual taxonomic groups. Because of this specialization, most data collected favored certain groups. Other fossils were either ignored, discounted, or loosely labelled qualitatively under descriptive terms as: rare, occasional or abundantly present. Ausich (1981) and Boucot (1981) have independently proposed methods of community analysis whereby the biovolume (shelly biomass) of all taxa present are quantified. To date, little has been done to substantiate the reproducibility of data obtained in this manner for level, soft-bottom, Paleozoic communities. A level, soft-bottom, Middle Devonian community is analyzed here using the sampling model proposed by Ausich (1981). Trends in the comparisons of biovolume to minimum number counts are shown to be reproducible as are trends in each of these catagories within individual horizontally continuous beds. Informational loss and quantitative reproducibility for this new method is shown to be an improvement over prior methodology.

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Author Institution: Department of Geological Sciences, Wright State University

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The Ohio Journal of Science. v84, n3 (June, 1984), 98-102