Estudiando los determinantes de la composición de comunidades y sus dinámicas en el pasado incorporando información filogenética y funcional al registro fósil

Abstract

Nieto-Lugilde, D., López-Sáez, J.A., Alba-Sánchez, F. 2018. Studying community assembly drivers and its past dynamics incorporating phylogenetic and functional data to the fossil record. Ecosistemas 27(1): 52-61. Doi.: 10.7818/ECOS.1438 Studying community assembly drivers and its past dynamics incorporating phylogenetic and functional data to the fossil record. The fossil record provides information on species relative abundances at specific times, which in turns can inform about community dynamics over long time periods, being the Pleistocene and the Holocene the best represented. However, palaeoecological data are rarely incorporated in hypothesis and models recently developed to explain community composition. The role of abiotic variables (i.e., climate) to drive community assembly is well documented both in contemporary ecology and the fossil record. Although the role of biotic interactions in community assembly remains controversial, phylogenetic and functional traits information are contributing to clarify its importance on contemporary communities. The growing popularity of ecoinformatic modelling tools along with an increasing availability of palaeoecological data in online databases facilitates the integration of palaeoecological data to inform theory and models of community ecology. However, such integration remains largely unexplored. Aiming to boost such sort of studies, we review here advances in palaeoecological studies to inform community ecology, we also provide a guide on common uncertainties associated with fossil records to ensure a rigorous use of them, and propose further working lines in such integration.