T10 Biodiversity Dynamics in the Face of Environmental Change: Integrating Paleontological and Neontological Approaches to Macroevolution I

Sunday, 22 October 2017
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Room 608

HISTORY SUPPLEMENTS CURRENT ENVIRONMENT IN DRIVING FUNCTIONAL DIVERSITY PATTERNS

Paper number: T10-12
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:45 AM – 11:05 AM

Authors

Abstract

Functional diversity is an essential aspect of biodiversity, determining environmental responses and ecological impact. While it is evident that species diversity is co-determined by contemporary drivers and historical dynamics, the importance of the latter for functional diversity remains little explored. Here, I synthesise new work on the relative importance of historical and contemporary drivers for functional diversity for plants, covering cross continental comparisons, and a range of historical drivers. The results I present here show how Quaternary-scale climate influences broad-scale patterns in assemblage trait means and that high variability and distance to stable areas is associated with reduced functional diversity, with links also to deeper-time climate. Further, I show how non-climatic regional effects, consistent with a strong role of regional historical idiosyncrasies. The work I present here demonstrates that functional diversity patterns cannot be fully understood from contemporary drivers, but also reflect long-term dynamics, with significant implications for responses to anthropogenic global change.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 49, No. 6

doi: 10.1130/abs/2017AM-298367

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