气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): Addressing the effects of sampling on ecometric-based paleoenvironmental reconstructions

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DOI	10.1016/j.palaeo.2019.05.006
	Addressing the effects of sampling on ecometric-based paleoenvironmental reconstructions
	Faith J.T.; Du A.; Rowan J.
发表日期	2019
ISSN	0031-0182
起始页码	175
结束页码	185
卷号	528
英文摘要	Ecometric analysis involves the examination of quantifiable functional traits across the taxa in a biotic community. Well-documented relationships between certain functional traits and environmental gradients in the present provide the empirical framework for a large body of research that uses ecometrics to reconstruct environments in the fossil record. In current applications of the technique, the taxa present in a fossil assemblage are summarized using the mean value of an environmentally informative trait. This study explores some of the quantitative pitfalls inherent to this approach. Through analysis of dental crown height—a trait that is widely used to infer paleo-precipitation—of Late Pleistocene ungulate assemblages from the Lake Victoria Basin in western Kenya, we illustrate how ecometric means vary as a function of sample size. Sampling artifacts have the potential to bias ecometric means, and the environmental inferences derived from them, whenever there is a non-random distribution of traits across the species abundance distribution (e.g., if abundant taxa have different traits than rare taxa). This sampling issue also means that the degree of analytical precision implied by quantitative paleoenvironmental reconstructions (e.g., annual precipitation at time X was 500 mm/yr) derived from ecometrics may be unwarranted. We recommend that analytical approaches be modified to circumvent these problems and explore three potential solutions: (1) specimen-based rarefaction, (2) coverage-based rarefaction, and (3) weighting ecometric means by taxonomic abundances. Of these, only the latter is robust to variation in sampling effort. Because abundance data are not always available and are potentially unreliable, we outline alternative approaches that could be implemented to contend with sample bias. © 2019 Elsevier B.V.
英文关键词	Ecometrics; Functional traits; Hypsodonty; Paleoclimate; Rarefaction; Sample size
语种	英语
scopus关键词	empirical analysis; environmental gradient; fossil assemblage; fossil record; functional group; hypsometry; paleoclimate; paleoenvironment; pitfall trap; Pleistocene; precipitation (climatology); reconstruction; sampling; ungulate; East African Lakes; Kenya; Lake Victoria; Ungulata
来源期刊	Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/150925
作者单位	Natural History Museum of Utah, University of Utah, 301 Wakara Way, Salt Lake City, UT 84108, United States; Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, 260 S. Central Campus Drive, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, United States; Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, The University of Chicago, 1027 E 57th St., Chicago, IL 60637, United States; Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003, United States
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Faith J.T.,Du A.,Rowan J.. Addressing the effects of sampling on ecometric-based paleoenvironmental reconstructions[J],2019,528.
APA	Faith J.T.,Du A.,&Rowan J..(2019).Addressing the effects of sampling on ecometric-based paleoenvironmental reconstructions.Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology,528.
MLA	Faith J.T.,et al."Addressing the effects of sampling on ecometric-based paleoenvironmental reconstructions".Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 528(2019).