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Science 10 November 2006:
Vol. 314. no. 5801, p. 925
DOI: 10.1126/science.1131363
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Technical Comments

Response to Comments on "Statistical Independence of Escalatory Ecological Trends in Phanerozoic Marine Invertebrates"

Joshua S. Madin,1* John Alroy,1 Martin Aberhan,2 Franz T. Fürsich,3 Wolfgang Kiessling,2 Matthew A. Kosnik,4 Peter J. Wagner5

Roopnarine et al. and Dietl and Vermeij do not challenge our results but argue that escalation can be seen only at fine scales. This claim diminishes the theory and needs to be tested, not asserted. Roopnarine et al. incorrectly presume that our data are dominated by carnivores. Dietl and Vermeij overlook the fact that in addition to having no effect on global diversity, escalation has no effect on occurrence frequency.

1 National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93101, USA.
2 Museum für Naturkunde, Humboldt-Universität, 10115 Berlin, Germany.
3 Institut für Paläontologie, Universität Würzburg, 97070 Würzburg, Germany.
4 School of Marine Biology and Aquaculture, James Cook University, Townsville 4811, Australia.
5 Department of Geology, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL 60605, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: madin{at}nceas.ucsb.edu

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
From the Cover: Strong coupling of predation intensity and diversity in the Phanerozoic fossil record.
J. W. Huntley and M. Kowalewski (2007)
PNAS 104, 15006-15010
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