From Crisis to Recovery: Biological Responses to Environmental Change in the Fossil Record

The fossil record provides a unique archive of how life on Earth has responded to environmental and climatic perturbations through deep time. Marine ecosystems have repeatedly experienced episodes of rapid change, including thermal maxima, cooling events, ocean anoxia, salinity crises, and major basin reconfigurations. These perturbations often triggered profound ecological and evolutionary responses, ranging from shifts in species distributions and community composition to morphological innovations, changes in body size, calcification strategies, and patterns of endemism. By documenting these biological responses, the fossil record allows us to reconstruct how ecosystems adapted to, survived, or recovered from environmental stress. Such events not only shaped biodiversity through Earth’s history but also provide valuable natural experiments to understand the resilience and vulnerability of marine ecosystems. This Research Topic aims to explore how marine organisms and ecosystems responded to environmental perturbations and extreme events throughout Earth’s history. Environmental crises can disrupt ecosystems at multiple scales, affecting biodiversity, ecological interactions, and evolutionary trajectories. However, these events also offer opportunities to study processes of adaptation, resilience, and recovery.By bringing together studies from different geological periods and environments, this Research Topic seeks to synthesize current knowledge on biological responses to environmental change recorded in the fossil record. Contributions may address the mechanisms that allow organisms and communities to persist under environmental stress, as well as the processes that drive ecological reorganization and evolutionary innovation following crises. Emphasis is placed on integrating paleontological, micropaleontological, sedimentological, and geochemical perspectives to better understand the relationship between environmental change and biological responses.Beyond their relevance for reconstructing past ecosystems, these studies provide valuable insights into the potential responses of modern marine ecosystems to ongoing climate change. Understanding how ecosystems reacted to past rapid environmental changes may help identify the processes that control resilience, tipping points, and recovery trajectories in marine systems.This Research Topic welcomes contributions investigating biological responses to environmental perturbations across the fossil record, particularly in marine settings. We encourage submissions that explore how organisms and ecosystems responded before, during, and after environmental crises.Submissions covering one or more of the following aspects are welcomed:• Paleontology and micropaleontology: new fossil discoveries, taxonomic revisions, or reinterpretations of macro-, micro-, and trace fossils related to environmental perturbations. • Morphological and ecological responses: changes in species associations, body size, calcification, biodiversity patterns, and endemism during environmental crises. • Evolutionary responses: adaptation, extinction and survival patterns, ecological restructuring, and evolutionary innovation following environmental stress.• Quantitative and statistical approaches to ecosystem change, including biodiversity dynamics, community restructuring, and functional trait evolution across environmental crises Topic editors: Francesca Bulian, Alan Maria Mancini, Montserrat Alonso-Garcia Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79766/from-crisis-to-recovery-biological-responses-to-environmental-change-in-the-fossil-record