FROM NATURAL HISTORY TO BIODIVERSITY STUDIES: PALEONTOLOGICAL DATA ENABLING NEW SYNTHESES IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION

Biologists and computer scientists have developed a sophisticated series of analytical techniques that utilize the rich diversity of life archived in natural history museum collections to address various questions about climate change, ecology, biogeography, and evolution. Although these biological studies provide many insights, they are hampered by the absence of temporal data and their inability to sample extinct taxa. Thankfully, these new research protocols can also be productively applied to the rich archive of paleontological data that is available. Applying these new protocols to modern and fossil biodiversity studies make it possible to address questions in a way that was not possible previously, and provides prospects for new theoretical insights and also syntheses between paleontology and biology. Here, the focus will be on discussing how GIS, PaleoGIS, and ecological niche modeling (ENM), in conjunction with detailed temporal, georeferenced, and environmental data from fossils and the rocks they are preserved in, has enhanced our understanding of ecology, macroevolution, and the history of life. Special emphasis will be placed on how these approaches have been used to study various topics including the nature of the Late Devonian biodiversity crisis and the end Ordovician mass extinction, aspects of the Cambrian radiation and the distribution of Burgess Shale type faunas, the macroevolutionary role of competition in the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway, and finally the predicted future faunal effects of present day climate change. With the ever-increasing prospects for access to collections data using the web, it is anticipated that the number of studies, and also the potential insights available from them, will continue to grow. These new approaches represent a real opportunity for paleontology to better integrate with biology and to embrace what is literally a revolution in the biodiversity sciences.