Labandeira Conrad C, Johnson Kirk R, Wilf Peter
Department of Paleobiology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560-0121, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002 Feb 19;99(4):2061-6. doi: 10.1073/pnas.042492999.
Evidence for a major extinction of insect herbivores is provided by presence-absence data for 51 plant-insect associations on 13,441 fossil plant specimens, spanning the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary in southwestern North Dakota. The most specialized associations, which were diverse and abundant during the latest Cretaceous, almost disappeared at the boundary and failed to recover in younger strata even while generalized associations regained their Cretaceous abundances. These results are consistent with a sudden ecological perturbation that precipitated a diversity bottleneck for insects and plants.
通过对北达科他州西南部13441个化石植物标本上51种植物 - 昆虫组合的有无数据研究，为食草昆虫的一次大灭绝提供了证据。这些组合跨越白垩纪/古近纪边界。最特化的组合在白垩纪晚期种类多样且数量丰富，但在边界处几乎消失，在更年轻的地层中也未能恢复，而一般化的组合则恢复到了白垩纪时的数量。这些结果与一次突然的生态扰动相一致，这次扰动导致了昆虫和植物的多样性瓶颈。
