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Abstract Understanding how changes in climate affect habitat availability for species through time is critical for macroevolutionary, ecological, and conservation research. When combined with palaeoclimate reconstructions, the fossil record provides insights into how species' geographic distributions have responded to past climate shifts, including under non‐analogous climate conditions. Palaeophylogeographic models (PPGMs) offer a framework to integrate modern and palaeontological data into phylogenetic comparative analyses of species climate tolerances. TheppgmR package is an implementation of PPGMs, which estimates species climate envelopes, reconstructs ancestral climatic tolerances across phylogenies, and projects these onto palaeoclimatic maps to identify climatically available regions through time. The package also supports direct inclusion of fossil occurrences with associated palaeoclimatic data, allowing a reconstruction of past trends of species climate tolerances projected into palaeoclimatic maps to pinpoint the locations of climate availability through time according to the fossil record. We demonstrate the broad applicability ofppgmthrough detailed case studies, showing its potential for addressing research questions in macroevolutionary and conservation palaeobiology research. Theppgmpackage complements existing R packages by allowing researchers to use analytical techniques on large integrated datasets and facilitates reproducible analyses of species climate niches over deep and shallow time.
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From fossils to mind
Abstract Fossil endocasts record features of brains from the past: size, shape, vasculature, and gyrification. These data, alongside experimental and comparative evidence, are needed to resolve questions about brain energetics, cognitive specializations, and developmental plasticity. Through the application of interdisciplinary techniques to the fossil record, paleoneurology has been leading major innovations. Neuroimaging is shedding light on fossil brain organization and behaviors. Inferences about the development and physiology of the brains of extinct species can be experimentally investigated through brain organoids and transgenic models based on ancient DNA. Phylogenetic comparative methods integrate data across species and associate genotypes to phenotypes, and brains to behaviors. Meanwhile, fossil and archeological discoveries continuously contribute new knowledge. Through cooperation, the scientific community can accelerate knowledge acquisition. Sharing digitized museum collections improves the availability of rare fossils and artifacts. Comparative neuroanatomical data are available through online databases, along with tools for their measurement and analysis. In the context of these advances, the paleoneurological record provides ample opportunity for future research. Biomedical and ecological sciences can benefit from paleoneurology’s approach to understanding the mind as well as its novel research pipelines that establish connections between neuroanatomy, genes and behavior.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2219759
- PAR ID:
- 10528447
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Publisher / Repository:
- Springer Nature
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Communications Biology
- Volume:
- 6
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2399-3642
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-04803-4
