Triton, a new species-level database of Cenozoic planktonic foraminiferal occurrences

Abstract

Planktonic foraminifera are a major constituent of ocean floor sediments, and thus have one of the most complete fossil records of any organism. Expeditions to sample these sediments have produced large amounts of spatiotemporal occurrence records throughout the Cenozoic, but no single source exists to house these data. We have therefore created a comprehensive dataset that integrates numerous sources for spatiotemporal records of planktonic foraminifera. This new dataset, Triton, contains >500,000 records and is four times larger than the previous largest database, Neptune. To ensure comparability among data sources, we have cleaned all records using a unified set of taxonomic concepts and have converted age data to the GTS 2020 timescale. Where ages were not absolute (e.g. based on biostratigraphic or magnetostratigraphic zones), we have used generalised additive models to produce continuous estimates. This dataset is an excellent resource for macroecological and macroevolutionary studies, particularly for investigating how species responded to past climatic changes.

Fig. 1

The number of records (in 1000 s) from each of the different data sources in Triton. The referenced data sources are: Pangaea, ODPs (ocean drilling projects: DSDP, ODP and IODP), Neptune^–, ForCenS, Fenton, et al., Lloyd, et al.. Inset: Globigerinella adamsi, an example planktonic foraminiferal specimen from the Paleogene GLObal Warming events “GLOW” cruise, Southwest Indian Ocean, scale bar = 200 μm.

Fig. 2

The latitudinal spread of data through time, showing (a) Triton and (b) the current data in Neptune. The squares are coloured to show the number of records, where a record is a row in the database (i.e. a species at a given location for a given age).

Fig. 3

Species richness through time estimated from Triton (i.e. the number of species in each 1 Ma time bin). The pattern observed in Triton matches our understanding of diversity through the Cenozoic, particularly capturing the extinctions that occur at the end of the Eocene at 34 Ma. The vertical lines indicate geological stages. Pl – Pliocene; Pi – Pleistocene. Note this plot uses the trimmed version of the data.

Fig. 4

Different age model estimates applied to core material from IODP Site U1499A in the South China Sea. Mag – mean age based only on the magnetostratigraphic marker events. Zones – mean age based on all the marker events. Int Mag – interpolation of the points between the magnetostratigraphic marker events. Interp – interpolation between the full set of marker events. Model – the model of age as a function of depth. Note the hiatus between 50 and 100 m. For the shallower section of the dataset, with only three data points, a simple linear model was used. For the deeper section, a GAM smooth was fitted. For this site, the model predictions were chosen as the best fit.