THE PRESERVATION POTENTIAL OF DIVERSITY GRADIENTS IN MAMMALS, REPTILES, AMPHIBIANS AND BIRDS

The fossil record allows us to study the long-term processes responsible for generating spatio-temporal macroecological and macroevolutionary patterns, including those that have helped sculpt present-day patterns in biodiversity. In addition, understanding how different facets of diversity have changed in response to past environmental perturbations (including mass extinctions) may offer a valuable roadmap for predicting the consequences of ongoing global change. However, the intersection of spatial and temporal patterns in diversity, and their influence on pattern fidelity in the fossil record, have only just begun to be investigated.

Here, we present preliminary results from a new, simulations-based method designed to address fundamental questions about the preservation potential of spatio-temporal diversity patterns. Specifically, we ask: what is the fidelity with which trends in terrestrial alpha, beta, and gamma diversity can be preserved in the fossil record? How is this fidelity affected by intrinsic factors, such as the differential preservation potential among different taxonomic groups? And finally, how is this fidelity affected by extrinsic factors, such as the variable distribution of fossil localities through time? In this fashion, we attempt to perform a novel and systematic attempt to ‘calibrate’ the quality of the terrestrial fossil record under a range of scenarios, and thus help identify key questions in macroecology and macroevolution that can be answered with fossil data.