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Spatial Bias in the Marine Fossil Record

Inference of past and present global biodiversity requires enough global data to distinguish biological pattern from sampling artifact. Pertinently, many studies have exposed correlated relationships between richness and sampling in the fossil record, and methods to circumvent these biases have been...

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Autores principales: Vilhena, Daril A., Smith, Andrew B.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3813679/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24204570
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0074470
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author Vilhena, Daril A.
Smith, Andrew B.
author_facet Vilhena, Daril A.
Smith, Andrew B.
author_sort Vilhena, Daril A.
collection PubMed
description Inference of past and present global biodiversity requires enough global data to distinguish biological pattern from sampling artifact. Pertinently, many studies have exposed correlated relationships between richness and sampling in the fossil record, and methods to circumvent these biases have been proposed. Yet, these studies often ignore paleobiogeography, which is undeniably a critical component of ancient global diversity. Alarmingly, our global analysis of 481,613 marine fossils spread throughout the Phanerozoic reveals that where localities are and how intensively they have been sampled almost completely determines empirical spatial patterns of richness, suggesting no separation of biological pattern from sampling pattern. To overcome this, we analyze diversity using occurrence records drawn from two discrete paleolatitudinal bands which cover the bulk of the fossil data. After correcting the data for sampling bias, we find that these two bands have similar patterns of richness despite markedly different spatial coverage. Our findings suggest that i) long-term diversity trends result from large-scale tectonic evolution of the planet, ii) short-term diversity trends are region-specific, and iii) paleodiversity studies must constrain their analyses to well-sampled regions to uncover patterns not driven by sampling.
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spelling pubmed-38136792013-11-07 Spatial Bias in the Marine Fossil Record Vilhena, Daril A. Smith, Andrew B. PLoS One Research Article Inference of past and present global biodiversity requires enough global data to distinguish biological pattern from sampling artifact. Pertinently, many studies have exposed correlated relationships between richness and sampling in the fossil record, and methods to circumvent these biases have been proposed. Yet, these studies often ignore paleobiogeography, which is undeniably a critical component of ancient global diversity. Alarmingly, our global analysis of 481,613 marine fossils spread throughout the Phanerozoic reveals that where localities are and how intensively they have been sampled almost completely determines empirical spatial patterns of richness, suggesting no separation of biological pattern from sampling pattern. To overcome this, we analyze diversity using occurrence records drawn from two discrete paleolatitudinal bands which cover the bulk of the fossil data. After correcting the data for sampling bias, we find that these two bands have similar patterns of richness despite markedly different spatial coverage. Our findings suggest that i) long-term diversity trends result from large-scale tectonic evolution of the planet, ii) short-term diversity trends are region-specific, and iii) paleodiversity studies must constrain their analyses to well-sampled regions to uncover patterns not driven by sampling. Public Library of Science 2013-10-30 /pmc/articles/PMC3813679/ /pubmed/24204570 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0074470 Text en © 2013 Vilhena, Smith http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Vilhena, Daril A.
Smith, Andrew B.
Spatial Bias in the Marine Fossil Record
title Spatial Bias in the Marine Fossil Record
title_full Spatial Bias in the Marine Fossil Record
title_fullStr Spatial Bias in the Marine Fossil Record
title_full_unstemmed Spatial Bias in the Marine Fossil Record
title_short Spatial Bias in the Marine Fossil Record
title_sort spatial bias in the marine fossil record
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3813679/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24204570
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0074470
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