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Spatial sampling heterogeneity limits the detectability of deep time latitudinal biodiversity gradients

Jones, L; Dean, C; Mannion, P; Farnsworth, A; Allison, P; (2021) Spatial sampling heterogeneity limits the detectability of deep time latitudinal biodiversity gradients. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences , 288 (1945) , Article 20202762. 10.1098/rspb.2020.2762. Green open access

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Abstract

The latitudinal biodiversity gradient (LBG), in which species richness decreases from tropical to polar regions, is a pervasive pattern of the modern biosphere. Although the distribution of fossil occurrences suggests this pattern has varied through deep time, the recognition of palaeobiogeographic patterns is hampered by geological and anthropogenic biases. In particular, spatial sampling heterogeneity has the capacity to impact upon the reconstruction of deep time LBGs. Here we use a simulation framework to test the detectability of three different types of LBG (flat, unimodal and bimodal) over the last 300 Myr. We show that heterogeneity in spatial sampling significantly impacts upon the detectability of genuine LBGs, with known biodiversity patterns regularly obscured after applying the spatial sampling window of fossil collections. Sampling-standardization aids the reconstruction of relative biodiversity gradients, but cannot account for artefactual absences introduced by geological and anthropogenic biases. Therefore, we argue that some previous studies might have failed to recover the ‘true’ LBG type owing to incomplete and heterogeneous sampling, particularly between 200 and 20 Ma. Furthermore, these issues also have the potential to bias global estimates of past biodiversity, as well as inhibit the recognition of extinction and radiation events.

Type: Article
Title: Spatial sampling heterogeneity limits the detectability of deep time latitudinal biodiversity gradients
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2020.2762
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2020.2762
Language: English
Additional information: © 2021 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Earth Sciences
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10120225
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