Habitat tracking, stasis and survival in Neogene large mammals

Abstract

Species response to environmental change may vary from adaptation to the new conditions, to dispersal towards territories with better ecological settings (known as habitat tracking), and to extinction. A phylogenetically explicit analysis of habitat tracking in Caenozoic large mammals shows that species moving over longer distances during their existence survived longer. By partitioning the fossil record into equal time intervals, we showed that the longest distance was preferentially covered just before extinction. This supports the idea that habitat tracking is a key reaction to environmental change, and confirms that tracking causally prolongs species survival. Species covering longer distances also have morphologically less variable cheek teeth. Given the tight relationship between cheek teeth form and habitat selection in large mammals, this supports the well-known, yet little tested, idea that habitat tracking bolsters morphological stasis.

Contrasting Phylogenetic and Diversity Patterns in Octodontoid Rodents and a New Definition of the Family Abrocomidae

“…Given that the presence of echimyids in southern South America has always represented an impoverished marginal sample of its astonishing diversity in the northern tropical areas, it suggests that the evolutionary response to paleoenvironmental changes by this clade would have been fidelity to their original habitats (Verzi et al , 2015. Because taxa which track Boriginal^habitats (in this case at least as a passive response, i.e., through local extinction) are expected to be morphologically more conservative than those that adapt to new environments (Raia et al 2012), this could explain the morphological similarity detected among anciently diverged lineages of echimyids (Table 1 and Fig. 11) and the related absence of differentiation stages as perceptible events decoupled from the origin of the clade.…”

Phylogenetic fields through time: temporal dynamics of geographical co-occurrence and phylogenetic structure within species ranges

“…More specifically, important cold-shift oscillations particularly around 2 and 1 Ma have been associated with both community-and species-level changes such as great taxonomic and phylogenetic turnover as well as mixing of mammalian faunas and species shifting their ranges to track their original habitats (e.g. [15,26,55,56]). Indeed, it is around these time periods, which correspond to our middle time bins, where we found significant species-level changes in co-occurrence patterns such as the total within-range richness and species' aggregation patterns discussed above.…”

“…[51,52]) and others biotic interactions [53,54]. Alternatively, palaeontological studies focused on species-level patterns have concentrated on range shiftschanges in species' geographical distributions-associating them almost exclusively with climate changes [25,55,56]. In general, species are thought to respond in an individualistic manner to such changes and thus producing non-analogue communities [57].…”

Pinniped turnover in the South Pacific Ocean: new evidence from the Plio-Pleistocene of the Atacama Desert, Chile

“…Equally interesting, though sometimes neglected, are the faunal turnovers or evolutionary changes within regional assemblages over geologic time. In this approach, the fossil record provides important data about the taxonomic composition of assemblages, which can be compared with extant distributions, evoking questions about the pace and degree of evolutionary change and extinction (Jernvall and Fortelius, 2004;Badgely et al, 2008;Raia et al, 2012). Previously, evidence for wholesale faunal turnovers in pinnipeds had been noted by Olson (1983) along South African coasts during the Neogene, where the once abundant monachine seals (Homiphoca capensis) have gone extinct and been completely replaced by the extant otariid Arctocephalus pusillus.…”