Journal article
Mechanistic neutral models show that sampling biases drive the apparent explosion of early tetrapod diversity
- Abstract:
- Estimates of deep-time biodiversity typically rely on statistical methods to mitigate the impacts of sampling biases in the fossil record. However, these methods are limited by the spatial and temporal scale of the underlying data. Here we use a spatially explicit mechanistic model, based on neutral theory, to test hypotheses of early tetrapod diversity change during the late Carboniferous and early Permian, critical intervals for the diversification of vertebrate life on land. Our simulations suggest that apparent increases in early tetrapod diversity were not driven by local endemism following the ‘Carboniferous rainforest collapse’. Instead, changes in face-value diversity can be explained by variation in sampling intensity through time. Our results further demonstrate the importance of accounting for sampling biases in analyses of the fossil record and highlight the vast potential of mechanistic models, including neutral models, for testing hypotheses in palaeobiology.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 8.6MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41559-023-02128-3
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Ecology and Evolution More from this journal
- Volume:
- 7
- Pages:
- 1480–1489
- Publication date:
- 2023-07-27
- Acceptance date:
- 2023-06-20
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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2397-334X
- Language:
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English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1454709
- Local pid:
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pubs:1454709
- Deposit date:
-
2023-06-20
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Dunne et al
- Copyright date:
- 2023
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons. org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Notes:
- For the purpose of open access, the authors have applied a ‘Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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