Extinction is rarely random across ecological and geological time scales. Traits that make
some species more extinction-prone include individual traits, such as body size, and
abundance. Substantial consistency appears across ecological and geological time scales
in such traits. Evolutionary branching produces phylogenetic (as often measured by
taxonomic) nesting of extinction-biasing traits at many scales. An example is the tendency,
seen in both fossil and modern data, for higher taxa living in marine habitats to have …