Palaeoecology: Methods

Rebecca C Terry, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA

Published online: December 2009

DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0003274

Paleoecology is based on the documentation of occurrences and abundances of taxa across time and space. Although methodologically similar to the techniques of neontological ecologists, the discipline is distinct in its integration of a deeper time axis into our understanding of the processes shaping the earth's ecological patterns. Taphonomy is the study of the processes by which organic remains become incorporated into the fossil record. Since this record is both incomplete and biased, multiple taphonomic approaches have been developed to quantify the reliability of the ecological information it preserves. As such, a fundamental issue in paleoecology relates to the sampling and counting of individuals. Although the nature of the preserving sediments often exerts the primary control on how data are collected, techniques exist to standardize sampling and counting strategies to maximize our ability to detect ecological patterns and gain insight into the processes shaping both ancient and modern communities.

Key Concepts:

  • Paleoecologists study ancient organisms and ecosystem dynamics over evolutionary time scales.
  • Taphonomic studies have shown that the quality of ecological information preserved in the fossil record is high.
  • The preservation potential of organic remains is a function of depositional environment as well as structural, chemical and behavioural characteristics of an organism.
  • Sample standardization is an important consideration for paleoecological data collection and analysis.
  • Biography information: Rebecca C Terry is a paleoecologist and taphonomist with a research focus on small mammal community dynamics through the Holocene.

Keywords: taphonomy; ecology; paleontology; fossils; preservation

Figure 1. History of Phanerozoic diversity and the three ‘evolutionary faunas’ as revealed by a factor analysis of data compiled from the literature. The grey area immediately below the curve for total diversity represents the residual diversity not accommodated by the first three factors in the analysis. The number ‘1750’ in the upper left-hand corner is the approximate number of metazoan families that have been described from the modern oceans. Reproduced from Sepkoski (1981), with permission from The Paleontological Society.
Figure 2. Ecospace utilization analyses showing the changes in the average relative abundances (based on specimen counts) of tiering (a), motility (b) and feeding types (c) between mid-Paleozoic (461–359 Ma) and late Cenozoic (23–0.01 Ma) fossil assemblages. For the two Cenozoic data sets, the 95% error bars represent simple sampling uncertainty, and they were calculated by a two-stage boostrap procedure that resampled (with replacement) both the specimens in each sample and the samples used to calculate each mean, thus adding together the uncertainty generated by both stages of sampling (number of iterations=50 000). For the Paleozoic data (third row), the error bars represent the range of values resulting from different assumptions about the strength of the bias against aragonite preservation. The shaded bars show the bias-simulated results assuming that 40% of the individuals in the average original community were aragonitic. The ‘taphonomic error bars’ encompass the raw data (bases of triangles; assumes no disolution bias) and the bias-simulated data for 70% aragonitic specimens (uncapped ends of lines). The Paleozoic data do not have sampling error bars, but they would be of the same magnitude as those shown for the Cenozoic data. Reproduced from Bush et al. (2007), with permission from the Paleontological Society.
Figure 3. The scales of spatial and temporal averaging in fossil assemblages for different major groups of organisms, in continental (a) and benthic marine (b) depositional settings. Reproduced from Behrensmeyer et al. (2000), with permission from the Paleontological Society.
Figure 4. The taphonomic processes and circumstances that, during the fossilization of organic remains, have potential to modify the original biological signal at different postmortem phases. Reproduced from Behrensmeyer and Kidwell (1985), with permission from the Paleontological Society.
Figure 5. Comparison of average confidence interval (CI) size obtained by collecting more replicate samples versus larger replicate samples at different levels of total sampling effort. Results are shown for four species with different average abundances sampled from a patchy distribution. Reproduced from Bennington and Rutherford (1999), with permission from The Society for Sedimentary Geology.
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Related Sub-Topics:

Fossils and Evolution | Evolutionary Ecology | Biogeography and Macroecology | Ecological Methods
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Article Title: Palaeoecology: Methods
 
How to Cite close
Terry, Rebecca C(Dec 2009) Palaeoecology: Methods. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0003274]