Macroevolutionary consequences of profound climate change on niche evolution in marine molluscs over the past three million years.

ABSTRACT: In order to predict the fate of biodiversity in a rapidly changing world, we must first understand how species adapt to new environmental conditions. The long-term evolutionary dynamics of species' physiological tolerances to differing climatic regimes remain obscure. Here, we unite palaeontological and neontological data to analyse whether species' environmental tolerances remain stable across 3 Myr of profound climatic changes using 10 phylogenetically, ecologically and developmentally diverse mollusc species from the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal Plains, USA. We additionally investigate whether these species' upper and lower thermal tolerances are constrained across this interval. We find that these species' environmental preferences are stable across the duration of their lifetimes, even w

SUBMITTER: Saupe EE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4213627 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature