10.5061/DRYAD.CZ8W9GJ0T
Short, Rachel A.
0000-0001-6180-3294
Texas A&M University
Pinson, Katherine
Texas A&M University
Lawing, A. Michelle
Texas A&M University
Comparison of environmental inference approaches for ecometric analyses:
Using hypsodonty to estimate precipitation
Dryad
dataset
2020
Texas A&M University
https://ror.org/01f5ytq51
2021-06-09T00:00:00Z
2021-06-09T00:00:00Z
en
https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7081
1720826 bytes
4
CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication
Ecometrics is the study of community-level functional trait-environment
relationships. We use ecometric analyses to estimate paleoenvironment and
to investigate community-level functional changes through time. We
evaluate four methods that have been used or have the potential to be used
in ecometric analyses for estimating paleoenvironment to determine whether
there have been systematic differences in paleoenvironmental estimation
due to choice of the estimation method. Specifically, we evaluated linear
regression, polynomial regression, nearest neighbor, and maximum
likelihood methods to explore the predictive ability of the relationship
for a well-known ecometric dataset of mammalian herbivore hypsodonty
metrics (molar tooth crown to root height ratio) and annual precipitation.
Each method was applied to 43 Pleistocene fossil sites and compared to
annual precipitation from global climate models. Sites were categorized as
glacial or interglacial, and paleoprecipitation estimates were compared to
the appropriate model. Estimation methods produce results that are highly
correlated with log precipitation and estimates from the other methods (p
< 0.001). Differences between estimated precipitation and observed
precipitation are not significantly different across the four methods, but
maximum likelihood produces the most accurate estimates of precipitation.
When applied to paleontological sites, paleoprecipitation estimates align
more closely with glacial global climate models than with interglacial
models regardless of the age of the site. Each method has constraints that
are important to consider when designing ecometric analyses to avoid
misinterpretations when ecometric relationships are applied to the
paleontological record. We show interglacial fauna estimates of
paleoprecipitation more closely match glacial global climate models. This
is likely because of the anthropogenic effects on community reassembly in
the Holocene.