Another worm bites the dust: the Lilliput Effect in scolecodonts from the Late Devonian Biodiversity Crisis

Abstract The Lilliput Effect, wherein assemblages decrease in mean individual body size after mass extinctions, has not been documented at a wide geographic scale in any of the Late Devonian mass extinction pulses in invertebrate taxa. Based on a dataset of 800 scolecodonts (polychaete jaw elements) from the literature, museum collections, and newly presented data from the Appalachian Basin, we find that scolecodont size distribution per temporal bin decreases across the Frasnian/Famennian Kellwasser Events from a median length of 500 μm before the Kellwasser Events to a median length of 196 μm during the Kellwasser Events. The majority of the small scolecodonts documented during the extinction interval are newly measured specimens from the Kellwasser Events of the Appalachian Basin, although this size change is not unique to the Appalachian Basin. We interpret the reduction in body size as a hypoxia-driven occurrence of the Lilliput Effect because of the susceptibility of benthic invertebrates to hypoxia and the association of this extinction event with hypoxia. While previous studies have shown that polychaete community biomass decreases in response to oxygen stress, our study provides fossil evidence of individual size reduction, plausibly due to oxygen stress.