Abstract
Abstract Ecological studies have revealed that the functional roles of dominant species in modern communities are often more important than overall diversity in governing community composition and functioning. Despite this recognition that abundance and diversity data are both required for a complete understanding of ecological processes, many paleoecological studies focus on presence-absence data, possibly because of concerns regarding the taphonomic fidelity of time-averaged fossil accumulations. However, the abundance of organisms in shell beds has been shown to provide a fairly accurate record of the living community, suggesting that the benefits of relative-abundance data should be reconsidered. Recognition of ecologically dominant species in local fossil assemblages should be based on counts of relative abundance and assessment of ecological role. Ecological dominance at larger spatial or temporal scales can be quantified using the mean rank order of a clade and the proportion of assemblages where t...
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