Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
Wiltshire, J. (2010). Age Effects in the Extinction of Planktonic Foraminifera: A New Look at Van Valen's Red Queen Hypothesis. Retrieved from http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-0952
Van Valen's Red Queen hypothesis states that within a homogeneous taxonomic group the age is statistically independent of the rate of extinction. The case of the Red Queen hypothesis being addressed here is when the homogeneous taxonomic group is a group of similar species. Since Van Valen's work, various statistical approaches have been used to address the relationship between taxon duration (age) and the rate of extinction. Some of the more recent approaches to this problem using Planktonic Foraminifera (Foram) extinction data include Weibull and Exponential modeling (Parker and Arnold, 1997), and Cox proportional hazards modeling (Doran et al. 2004,2006). I propose a general class of test statistics that can be used to test for the effect of age on extinction. These test statistics allow for a varying background rate of extinction and attempt to remove the effects of other covariates when assessing the effect of age on extinction. No model is assumed for the covariate effects. Instead I control for covariate effects by pairing or grouping together similar species. I use simulated data sets to compare the power of the statistics. In applying the test statistics to the Foram data, I have found age to have a positive effect on extinction.
Survival Analysis, Statistics, Red Queen Hypothesis, Planktonic Foraminifera, Extinction
Date of Defense
Date of Defense: October 19, 2010.
Submitted Note
A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Statistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.
Bibliography Note
Includes bibliographical references.
Publisher
Florida State University
Identifier
FSU_migr_etd-0952
Use and Reproduction
This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them.
Wiltshire, J. (2010). Age Effects in the Extinction of Planktonic Foraminifera: A New Look at Van Valen's Red Queen Hypothesis. Retrieved from http://purl.flvc.org/fsu/fd/FSU_migr_etd-0952
