Occupancy, range size, and phylogeny in Eurasian Pliocene to Recent large mammals

Abstract

Temporal patterns in species occupancy and geographic range size are a major topic in evolutionary ecology research. Here we investigate these patterns in Pliocene to Recent large mammal species and genera in Western Eurasia. By using an extensively sampled fossil record including some 700 fossil localities, we found occupancy and range size trajectories over time to be predominantly peaked among both species and genera, meaning that occupancy and range size reached their maxima midway along taxon existence. These metrics are strongly correlated with each other and to body size, after phylogeny is accounted for by using two different phylogenetic topologies for both species and genera. Phylogenetic signal is strong in body size, and weaker but significant in both occupancy and range size mean values among genera, indicating that these variables are heritable. The intensity of phylogenetic signal is much weaker and often not significant at the species level. This suggests that within genera, occupancy and range size are somewhat variable. However, sister taxa inherit geographic position (the center of their geographic distribution). Taken together, the latter two results indicate that sister species occupy similar positions on the earth's surface, and that the expansion of the geographic range during the existence of a given genus is driven by range expansion of one or more of the species it includes, rather than simply being the summation of these species ranges.

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

“…B 371: 20150220 natural phenomena. Furthermore, species have predictable occupancy and geographical range temporal courses [23,31,32] and the inclusion of both extinct and extant species in the same analyses could yield results biased by the incompleteness of living species' evolutionary trends.…”

“…However, species' ranges are not static. They usually show considerable temporal dynamics involving shifts, contractions and expansions [19][20][21][22][23]. Therefore, by including spatially explicit fossil data, it becomes necessary to study the temporal dynamics of PFs and to determine the role of historical and evolutionary processes in shaping geographical patterns of species co-occurrences.…”

Habitat tracking, stasis and survival in Neogene large mammals

“…To test for possible correlation between duration and body size [11], we took extinct species' body sizes either from the literature or estimated it by allometric equations (electronic supplementary material, table S2).…”

Evidence for Trait-Based Dominance in Occupancy among Fossil Taxa and the Decoupling of Macroecological and Macroevolutionary Success

“…Several studies use locality-level data to look at occupancy patterns among fossil taxa (Foote et al 2007;Carotenuto et al 2010;Liow 2013;Foote 2016), although their uses of the concept of occupancy differ somewhat. These locality data, in turn, provide us with information about (paleo)geographic ranges Miller et al 2009;Wu and Miller 2014;Foote et al 2016;Ritterbush and Foote 2017) and different basic sedimentary environments inhabited by fossil taxa (e.g., Heim and Peters 2011;Foote 2014).…”