Body-size distributions of organisms across #environments in space and time are a powerful source of information on #ecological and #evolutionary processes. However, most studies only focus on selected parameters of #size distributions (e.g., central tendency or extremes) and rarely take into account entire #distributions and how they are affected by the #collection style and #facies

https://doi.org/10.2110/palo.2021.063

Here we analyze the impact of #facies, #region, #taxonomy, and #collection style over #size #distributions using diameter as a proxy of Late #Devonian #ammonoids in their entirety using non-metric #multidimensional #scaling and #PERMANOVA based on #Kolmogorov distance.

https://doi.org/10.2110/palo.2021.063

The #effects are then compared with effects on #mean #sizes. In all #analyses, #lithology was the #dominant effect, with sizes #greater by 59% in #marls and by 33% in #limestones, as compared to #black #shales. The effect of complete #sampling style was a #decrease in size by 11%.

https://doi.org/10.2110/palo.2021.063

#Kurtosis was an important #parameter differentiating #size distributions, with #platykurtic distributions in #marls and #leptokurtic distributions in #limestones, suggesting that this parameter may reflect different degrees of #time #averaging. Most size #distributions were positively #skewed, but most strongly in marls. Complete #sampling led to #skewness values close to zero (#symmetrical distributions) and high kurtosis.

https://doi.org/10.2110/palo.2021.063