Kristopher M. Kusnerik

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Assistant Professor at Hamilton College

Florida’s freshwater spring and river ecosystems have been deteriorating due to direct and indirect human impacts. However, while the conservation and restoration strategies employed to mitigate these effects often rely on faunal surveys that go back several decades, the local ecosystem shifts tend to have much deeper roots that predate those fauna...

As practitioners of a historical science, paleontologists and geoscientists are well versed in the idea that the ability to understand and to anticipate the future relies upon our collective knowledge of the past. Despite this understanding, the fundamental role that the history of paleontology and the geosciences plays in shaping the structure and...

Taphonomic processes are informative about the magnitude and timing of paleoecological changes but remain poorly understood with respect to freshwater invertebrates in spring-fed rivers and streams. We compared taphonomic alteration among freshwater gastropods in live, dead (surficial shell accumulations), and fossil (late Pleistocene–early Holocen...

Anthropogenic impacts, both direct and indirect, have had drastic effects on the health and diversity of Florida’s freshwater spring and river ecosystems. These include the introduction of invasive species, upstream migration of brackish/marine species into previously freshwater areas, and the upstream retreat of freshwater species. These shifts ar...

Stratigraphic patterns of last occurrences (LOs) of fossil taxa potentially fingerprint mass extinctions and delineate rates and geometries of those events. Although empirical studies of mass extinctions recognize that random sampling causes LOs to occur earlier than the time of extinction (Signor-Lipps effect), sequence stratigraphic controls on t...

Absolute fossil abundance [AFA] can be defined as a relative concentration of identifiable fossils per unit of sediment. AFA, or " sediment shelliness " , is controlled by the interplay between the rate of input of skeletal remains (biological productivity), pace of shell destruction (taphonomy), rate of sedimentation, and sediment compaction. Unde...

In siliciclastic marine settings, skeletal concentrations are a characteristic feature of transgressive intervals that provide insights into biological and sequence-stratigraphic processes. To investigate taphonomic signatures of transgressive intervals, we analyzed three cores along a depositional profile from the high resolution chrono- and strat...

In siliciclastic marine settings, skeletal concentrations are a characteristic feature of transgressive intervals that provide insights into paleobiology and sequence stratigraphy. To investigate taphonomic signatures of transgres-sive intervals, we analyzed three cores from a Holocene depositional profile of the Po coastal plain, in northern Italy...

Climate-driven changes in marine biodiversity during the latest Quaternary ice ages are poorly understood. This is largely because lowstand (glacial) records of marine communities are difficult to study due to their offshore location. Thanks to extensive sampling efforts in both proximal and distal parts of the Adriatic Sea, we now have an opportun...

In the marine realm, condensed deposits form in a variety of settings affected by sediment bypassing or sediment starvation. In siliciclastic marine settings skeletal concentrations are a diagnostic feature of condensed intervals and are of high relevance to sequence stratigraphy and paleobiology. Here, using three fossiliferous cores, we investiga...

Understanding how regional ecosystems respond to sea level and environmental perturbations is a main challenge in paleoecology. Even if environments may change over time, not all changes cause turnover, raising the question of which environmental conditions promote relative ecologic stability versus turnover. Here we present a study on marine benth...

The biotic record of the Sundance Seaway, a Jurassic epicontinental seaway that covered portions of the US Western Interior, is preserved in the Bighorn Basin of northern Wyoming and southern Montana in the Gypsum Spring Formation (Bajocian) and Sundance Formation (Bathonian-Oxfordian). Marine invertebrate communities were investigated to determine...

The Sundance Seaway was a Jurassic epicontinental seaway that covered portions of the United States and Canadian Western Interior. Reconstructions of the Seaway have varied in size, shape, and connections to the proto-Pacific Ocean, owing to an incomplete stratigraphic record of its limits. While most reconstructions depict a single, narrow, northe...

The eastern oyster, Crassostrea virginica, is declining in abundance throughout the Chesapeake Bay due to sediment influx, disease, pollution, and overharvesting. Although ecological and historical records are limited to the past 400 years, the Pleistocene record in the mid-Atlantic stretches back almost one million years and may provide a baseline...

Populations of Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) in the Chesapeake Bay have declined precipitously in recent centuries due to disease, sediment influx, pollution, and overharvesting. The Pleistocene fossil record provides ample evidence of once-thriving oyster reefs in the mid-Atlantic region. By examining the age distribution, oyster growth...

Population levels of eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) in the Chesapeake Bay have declined precipitously during the past two centuries, due to disease, sediment influx, and overharvesting. To restore these populations, it is essential to establish baseline data on healthy reefs. This study focuses on a well-preserved late Pleistocene oyster d...